Yesterday I went to the meeting for investors held by Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMT) in London. This was a useful event as they normally hold their AGMs in Scotland. Needless to say this company’s name is now grossly misleading as it does not invest in mortgages nor in Scotland but is a “global” investment trust. It has a great track record in the last few years and has a focus on growth companies. Their top 10 investments are Amazon, Alibaba, Illumina, Tencent, Tesla, Baidu, Kering, Inditex, Netflix and Ferrari which gives you a good idea of their focus. Here are some of the words of wisdom from manager James Anderson:
He finds the stock market ever more puzzling. Investors think daily headlines help you to invest but there is no correlation. Comment: I think he is saying ignore the political gyrations and such matters as Brexit. He suggested that people way cleverer than us get the world wrong and referred to the work of Hans Rosling and that of Hendrik Bessembinder who reported that 0.4% of all US stocks created half the wealth. Comment: Anderson implied that the key was to pick a few of those really successful growth companies because they will have the biggest impact on overall returns.
SMT therefore tries to identify businesses that are focused on growth markets with great potential – at least 40% per annum. Typically they are also run on a completely pragmatic basis.
Anderson thinks that deflation is highly likely in the next few years as companies they are investing in are reinventing the world. For example healthcare may become a lot cheaper as diagnostics improves and reduces the burden of expensive late stage interventions in cancer and heart disease.
Catherine Flood talked about the companies they are invested in and about the biotechnology sector where genome mapping is creating major opportunities. They have a rising number of private companies in their portfolio.
In response to questions, Anderson said they sold Apple two years ago because growth prospects seemed limited and had reduced their holding in Facebook for other reasons. He also questioned whether the kind of investment strategy following by Warren Buffett will continue to work in future as markets get disrupted by new companies using innovative technology. We may be facing a different world in future where “value” is less important.
As regards their large number of holdings in Chinese companies, Anderson was not worried about the political risks in China and expected China to become the dominant world economy in the near future. They are leading in technology in some areas (e.g. NIO in electric cars).
Overall this was an educational presentation as we got some understanding of the investment strategy of the company which clearly has worked well when economies have been buoyant and markets have been heading consistently upwards. The share price is at a premium to assets of 3.6% at present so might be vulnerable to a correction if there is any hiccup in the global economy. There was no mention of cash flows, return on capital or other “fundamental” measures of value in companies which tells you something does it not. But if you wish to invest in global growth companies, this is certainly one investment trust to consider.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
“We may be facing a different world in future where “value” is less important.”
Sounds an awful lot like the most dangerous words in investing: “This time it’s different”. Think I’ll stick with backing Buffett’s approach: probably exactly the right time to do so, after “value” has underperformed relative to “growth” and “momentum” for the last few years.
Mark Bentley