FOUR YEARS ON, OUR PORTFOLIO IS STILL DELIVERING

Tap a monthly stream of investment income from these ten funds

PROOF of the value of dividend income in the total returns that investors get from stock markets is demonstrated by a portfolio put together nearly four years ago by The Mail on Sunday.

In May 2019, with a big dollop of help from the Association of Investment Companies (AIC), we constructed a ten-strong investment trust portfolio, designed to deliver a rising stream of monthly income. The trusts, listed on the right, include a number of those in the table above.

Last week, we asked the AIC to provide us with an update on the portfolio’s progress.

Assuming we had invested £10,000 in each of the trusts on May 6, 2019, we have calculated the portfolio’s current value in two ways: assuming a) income was automatically reinvested; and b) income was taken as it was paid. In the first instance, the original £100,000 investment would have grown to more than £118,300. In the second, the portfolio would now be worth just short of £99,000, but investors would have pocketed nearly £17,300 of income over the course of the four years. To put these numbers into perspective, they are both better than if an investor had put £100,000 in the FTSE AllShare Index (a tad over £16,000). But inferior to an equivalent investment in the MSCI World Index that would have turned £100,000 into just above £132,400.

The MoS will provide a full update on the portfolio in May, its fourth anniversary.

The trusts were: BMO Managed Portfolio Income (now renamed CT Global Managed Portfolio Income); City of London;

Henderson Far East Income; JPMorgan Claverhouse; JP Morgan Global Growth & Income; Murray International; Perpetual Income & Growth (absorbed into Murray Income in late 2020); Schroder Income Growth; Scottish American; Temple Bar.