MDS1951 Investment Trust Portfolio Review 2019

[MDS1951]

It's that time of year again when some of us either hit the bottle because our investments have been disastrous during 2019 or imbibe more moderately because we have had quite a good year; I hope that it has been the latter case for us all. I've shamelessly copied and pasted last year's report for the basis of this year's offering.

My IT portfolio isn't huge and consists of 10 ITs purchased for roughly £2k per IT, making a total investment of £19.9k. I used Luni's B8 and B7 lists as the basis for my choices, but I also did a little research into each IT to see how they were regarded by other Fools, financial websites etc. The ITs are:-

BMO Capital and Income B7
City of London B8
Edinburgh Investment Trust B8
Law Debenture
Lowland Investment Company B7
Merchants B8
Murray Income B8
Murray International B7
Schroder Income Growth B8
Temple Bar B8

Dividend income for the portfolio in 2019 for comparison purposes with 2019 was £937 compared with £876 for 2018, an increase of 7%. That is way ahead of CPI inflation, so I'm happy with that. Maine Coons the Lady Mina and her son the Lord Midge continue to rejoice that their insurance premiums are still covered by my IT income. I should mention that the real dividend figure for 2019 was £959 but that was because Murray Income changed their dividend payment dates so that the dividend payable in January 2020 using their old calendar was paid in December 2019; so I excluded that dividend from the figures.

The value of the portfolio at today's closing prices is £24.1k which is a welcome bounce of 18.7% compared with its value a year ago of £20.3k. Only Edinburgh is now worth less than I paid for it, and their board has given their investment manager the Order of the Boot in the hope of better performance by the new manager.

I unitised the portfolio on an income unit basis from the beginning of the portfolio because all the dividends are being withdrawn from the portfolio. At 31/12/2019 the value per unit was £6.8914 compared with £5.8056 a year earlier - an increase of 18.7%. Income per unit for 2019 was 26.84p compared with 25.09p for 2018, a nice increase of 7%.

Just for purposes of comparison the FTSE100 index rose by 12.1% during 2019 so my IT portfolio increased in value by more than that; however, I'm old enough to know that what goes up can all too easily come down again.

So I'm happy with the performance of my ITs in 2019 and we'll see what 2020 brings.

Here's a link to my report for 2018. viewtopic.php?f=56&t=15455

Good luck everybody for 2020!

MDS1951