FUND house Martin Currie’s Securities Trust of Scotland delivered a slightly better than average performance in the six months to the end of September, outperforming the median fund in its peer group by 0.4 percentage points.
Unusually, the trust does not benchmark itself against a relevant stock market, but against the performance of other funds – both open and closed-ended - with a similar investment strategy.
During the six-month period the trust made a net asset value total return of 11.1 per cent while the median fund in the Global Equity Income Sector and Association of Investment Companies’ Global Equity Income Sector generated a return of 10.7%.
According to trust manager Mark Whitehead, the portfolio “produced a strong absolute gain” in the face of “political upheaval, the threat and implementation of tariffs and other macro and micro economic instability”.
Noting that “the divergence in regional equity market performance has been quite pronounced”, Mr Whitehead said the US market delivered the best returns in the period under review, growing by 20% in sterling terms.
Looking ahead to the remainder of the financial year he said the European market is likely to be the most “troublesome” overall, with ongoing uncertainty around Brexit likely to prove a drag.
“Economic activity is rebounding a little since the sharp falls earlier in the year, but business and consumer sentiment is unlikely to improve dramatically until the UK’s exit from the EU is agreed and some sort of trade accord ratified,” Mr Whitehead said.
“If an agreement is reached, it is reasonable to expect a rebound in European equities, which have struggled over the recent months.”
The trust, which in 2015 said it would adopt a progressive dividend policy, confirmed that its second interim dividend would remain unchanged at 1.45p per share. For the full 2016/17 year the trust paid out a total dividend of 5.95p, up from 5.8p the previous year.
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