MDS1951 Investment Trust Portfolio Review 2022

[MDS1951]

After a rather more exciting 2022 than I would have liked, here is my annual review of my Investment Trust portfolio. As for last year I've copied and pasted last year's report with tweaks 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 2022 was £984 compared with £946 for 2021, an increase of 4%; not as much as inflation but an increase nevertheless. Maine Coons the Lady Mina and her son the Lord Midge are pleased that the dividend income covers 75% of their insurance costs but still would like cover to be 100%; no chance of that now, I fear. The real point is that the dividend income remained steady in 2022.

The value of the portfolio at today's closing prices is £22.8k which is a increase of 1.8% compared with its value a year ago of £23.2k. Lowland has joined Edinburgh in the laggards' camp with both having dropped 10% on their purchase price. Law Debenture is still my star buy with the biggest capital gain by a wide margin, and the biggest increase in dividend income since the portfolio was completed. Overall, not much change.

Given the market turbulence and instability in Europe during 2022 I'm happy with the performance of my ITs in 2022 and we'll see what 2023 brings.

I'm aware that this portfolio is very FTSE UK biased, so a few years ago I decided to invest in unit trusts etc to widen the geographic spread of my collective investments. At the end of 2022 (2021 in brackets) the combined spread for all the collective investments was:-

29% (35%) UK
20% (20%) Rest of Greater Europe
36% (33%) Americas (mainly USA)
15% (12%) Greater Asia

I invested the maximum allowed under ISA rules during 2022.

Here's a link to my report for 2021.

viewtopic.php?f=56&t=32727

And so a Happy 2023 to us all.

MDS1951