The Lemon Fool

Hi. I'm mostly passive at the moment and I'll probably continue on that path for the global part of my portfolio but due to the sluggish nature of the FTSE indices over the last few decades and the fact that over valued stocks make up a disproportionate amount of a market cap weighted index I've been looking at an active approach for the UK proportion of my portfolio.

Anyway, while looking at a company with some potential (SPSY.L) I noticed that a big shareholder was Nicolas Slater. I looked him up and his fund (it's called Slater Growth) has gotten pretty good returns over the last 20 years given that he's more or less entirely UK focused. Also, the approach of the fund seems to be essentially the approach that I'd take myself (i.e. buy shares in high quality profit generating businesses that seem to be trading at a discount).

The fund size isn't too big (~1.5 billion) so the fund should still be able to take advantage of ome smaller cap stocks. The fees are obviously a lot higher than they would be for passive (about 1.55% if you buy direct) and I'd be buying via a HL SIPP so they'd be adding on some too. I'll need to run some numbers on what that would mean for real return, but I think that even then the fund would easily be outperforming any of the FTSE indices.

Does anyone here have any experience with this fund? Or is there anything else you would be considering?

Thanks in advance.

Slater Growth is run by Mark Slater, son of Jim, he of Zulu Principle fame.

Sorry, of course it is. Not sure why I got into my head that his name was Nicolas.

But yes, it also seems like he might have had a decent training when younger.

FTSE has given good performance the last 12 months or so but not exciting over the last 20 years, however the FTSE250 has given performance in the same ballpark as the S&P500 over the last 20 and 30 years.

Might be worth considering for a low cost passive approach to UK investing.

( I have been used a 50:50 mix of the FT All Share and FTSE250 for my passive coverage of the UK.)

DelayedInvestor wrote:Does anyone here have any experience with this fund? Or is there anything else you would be considering?

Thanks in advance.

I held it for a number of years, and was pleased with the performance. But I dropped it when simplifying my portfolio. I notice that its recent performance has been impressive.

scotia wrote:I held it for a number of years, and was pleased with the performance. But I dropped it when simplifying my portfolio. I notice that its recent performance has been impressive.

Thanks scotia. Out of curiosity, what was the nature of the simplification?

DelayedInvestor wrote:

scotia wrote:I held it for a number of years, and was pleased with the performance. But I dropped it when simplifying my portfolio. I notice that its recent performance has been impressive.

Thanks scotia. Out of curiosity, what was the nature of the simplification?

It was reducing the number of holdings in our (wife and self) portfolios, to make them simpler to look after - since we are both in our upper seventies.
In earlier years I used to closely follow the performances of companies and funds, and I built up a substantial number of investments. More recently I sold off all of the single companies, and reduced the number of funds (OEICs, ITs and ETFs). I suspect I'll get round to further reductions. Maybe a world tracker would suffice, since I really don't need to strive for optimal performance. It seems sensible (for both myself and my wife) to make such adjustments while we are still fit and well in both body and mind. However Slater Growth has certainly seen good performance - the 5 year total return is 98%.

Thanks Scotia. That makes perfect sense. Gives you more time to spend on other stuff too I'd imagine.

Thanks for the info on Slater too. I had a look and it's actually cheaper to get on HL because they can do the P units with lower management costs.