Mercantile Investment Trust [LON:MRC], an investment trust under the J.P. Morgan Asset Management umbrella, is the top performer in the Association of Investment Companies’ UK All Companies sector.
The AIC sector has seven constituents, and at GBP2.5bn, the Mercantile Investment Trust is the largest fund in its sector by some measure.
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The fund is managed by Guy Anderson, who heads up the UK mid- and smallcap team, and Anthony Lynch who have both been on deck since 2012. The investment trust’s objective is to achieve long-term capital growth through investing in a diversified portfolio of UK medium and smaller companies. It pays a quarterly dividend and aims to grow its dividend at least in line with inflation. The fund’s gearing policy is to operate within a range of 10% net cash to 20% geared. Gearing may magnify gains or losses experienced by the fund.
Mercantile Trust is a top performer over short- and long-term
Performance-wise the fund is also top of the tree. Over one-year Mercantile Investment Trust returned +30.92% against a sector average of +26.9% which, as noted above, is top-of-class in sector. Over five-years Mercantile had a rockier time, and was fifth in class with a +46.5% return, but this was still above the sector average of +44.1% - an average that was dragged down significantly by the Baillie Gifford UK Growth [LON:BGUK] investment trust, which only returned +14%.
Over ten-years Mercantile was again on top of the tree with a +131.1% return against a sector average of +109.8%.
It’s an understatement to note that the Mercantile Investment Trust has had some time to build up its assets and a loyal following, given it was launched in 1884, and will celebrate its 140th anniversary in December. The fund is benchmarked against the FTSE All-Share (ex-FTSE100, ex-Investment Companies) index.
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