Fundsmith Equity Fund

Fundsmith Annual Investor Letter

The views expressed in this article are those of its author and not necessarily those of ShareSoc. Terry Smith has published his thirteenth annual letter for investors in the Fundsmith Equity Fund (which I hold). As usual it’s a good mixture of sound analysis of market events and witticisms. I’ll cover a few significant points: The fund underperformed the MSCI World Index with a total return of minus 13.8%, which was better than my own portfolio. As he points out, the only way ...

Bank Dividends and Fundsmith Performance

The bad news for many private investors is that most of the major listed UK banks are suspending dividend payments, even ones already announced. This is after they received a letter from the Bank of England requesting that they do so. The dividends are unlikely to be resumed before the end of the year. This is surely a prudent measure as the banks will undoubtedly have many requests for loans from companies to tide them over the virus crisis, while other ...

Market Bouncing Up or Down – Sophos, Greggs, Apple and Fundsmith

After a dire market performance before Xmas, we seem to be back to the good times in the last 3 days. Is it time to get back into the market for those who moved into cash as the market fell down and down and down in the autumn? Rather early to generalise I suggest although I have been picking up some shares recently. One which I purchased a small holding in was Softcat (SCT). Yesterday it issued a trading update simply saying ...

Return Versus Risk and Tips from Terry Smith

There was an interesting article by Fundsmith founder Terry Smith in the Financial Times on Saturday under the heading “Think globally and add a dash of small caps”. His articles are usually full of wisdom. In this case he first tackled the issue that the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) tells you that your returns relate to how much investment risk you are willing to take on. This might be seen as common sense – why would anyone take more risks if ...

Fundsmith Annual Shareholders’ Meeting – An ODD investment strategy

The Annual Shareholder Meeting for holders of the Fundsmith Equity Fund was held last night (20/3/2017). Here’s a brief summary of manager Terry Smith’s presentation and the question/answer session...