MONKS INVESTMENT TRUST PLC (MNKS)

Yesterday (5/8/2014), I attended the Annual General Meeting of the Monks Investment Trust held at the IOD in London. This is a long established trust managed by Baillie Gifford. It has an investment focus on international equities but has a rather idiosyncratic portfolio because it is very much a "bottom-up" stock picking approach. Gerald Smith is the lead fund manager who has been there some time, now supported by Tom Walsh. Performance in the last few years has been comparatively poor. As ...

Monks Investment Trust is a general international investment trust but rather than being a closet index tracker it has a portfolio of somewhat diverse companies. In other words it is very much a “stock picking”, bottom-up approach with lots of “special situations”, undervalued opportunities, bets on future growth and other stocks in what it calls “a relatively concentrated” portfolio. But it still has a lot of holdings. The fund is managed by Baillie Gifford based in Edinburgh, with Gerald Smith having ...

Ever since inheriting some shares in Monks Investment Trust (MNKS) from a wise old uncle, I had always felt that this was one investment I did not have to needlessly worry about. The trust has been managed by Edinburgh fund manager Baillie Gifford (BG), for over 80 years and was set up in the year of the Wall Street Crash, so it should be able to weather the current tough times. BG is one of the few real partnerships left in a ...