Eve Maddock-Jones, Senior reporter, Trustnet, 28 April 2022:
In the midst of heightened market volatility Trustnet asks fund pickers which portfolios can provide attractive returns, diversification and defensiveness all in one offering.
Personal Assets Trust and Alliance Trust are some of experts’ preferred ‘one-stop-shop’ options for investors seeking a core portfolio allocation.
One-stop-shop portfolios are an easy way to access broad market exposure, providing a diversity of assets and geographies. Although they may not shoot the lights out in terms of performance, they are usually more defensive when markets go through volatile periods, like the ones investors have experienced recently. Because of their diversification it can make them a useful, core stabiliser within a portfolio…
Personal Assets Trust
First up is arguably one of the most well-known options for this type of portfolio, the Personal Assets Trust. It is run by FE fundinfo Alpha Manager Sebastian Lyon and co-manager Charlotte Yonge, who follow the fundamental goal of all Troy Asset Management portfolios, putting capital preservation at its core as a way of keeping volatility low.
Alliance Trust
Staying in the closed-ended space, James Carthew, head of investment companies at QuotedData, highlighted the Alliance Trust as a core, diversified portfolio pick.
The £2.8bn trust is an ‘dividend hero’, having raised its dividend every year for the past 54 years and is one of the oldest and largest investment trusts.
It is an active multi-manager portfolio, with investment managers, Willis Towers Watson, sub-contracting the management of the trust to 10 stock-pickers with different styles, each of which runs a 20-stock portfolio, totalling 188 individual holdings at present. As such, although the portfolio is broadly diversified, the individual stock picking process is very concentrated.
By using this method Carthew said they each “select their best ideas to make up a geographically diverse portfolio”.
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