Price and Performance

Over August, the Trust’s total shareholder return, NAV total return and equity portfolio all returned 1.2%. The benchmark MSCI All Country World Index (ACWI) returned 1.8% over the same period.

Recent performance brings the Trust’s equity portfolio return to 7.4% since 1 January 2018, against a benchmark return of 8.0% over the same period. While this is too short a period to draw any conclusions on manager skill, it is worth noting that during this period the strong index return has been driven by an unusually small number of mega-cap stocks to which the Alliance Trust portfolio is underweight in aggregate. In addition, there has been a noticeable divergence of performance between the US and the rest of the world (where the US has outperformed). Although we ensure that geography and industry sector calls are small and have little impact on the portfolio over any meaningful time period, the portfolio’s underweight US position (driven from bottom-up stock picking) has detracted over the 8-month period.

Whilst recent market conditions have proved challenging for the underlying managers, the equity portfolio remains ahead of benchmark by 1.7% since 1 April 2017*, representing meaningful outperformance which continues to be driven primarily by managers’ stock selection.

During August, Tencent and Suncor moved out of the top 20 holdings as a result of security sales and relative performance, respectively. These stocks were replaced in the top 20 by Baidu and Autodesk as a result of security purchases and relative performance, respectively. We continue to maintain our high level of conviction in all managers and have made no changes to target allocations over the month.

For more market insight, read our view from the Investment Manager.