Trade SCOTTISH MORTGAGE INVESTMENT TR - SMT CFD

SCOTTISH MORTGAGE INVESTMENT TR Company profile

​​Investment trusts, or close-ended funds, operate as public limited companies. These trusts are listed on the stock exchange and invest shareholders’ money in assets such as shares, real assets and bonds. Investment trusts are popular in the UK and Japan markets.

The Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMT) was launched on 17 March 1909. A publicly traded investment trust, SMT is managed by Edinburgh-based investment management partnership Baillie Gifford & Co. SMT, a FTSE 100 Index constituent, is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

SMT is marketed as a low-cost investment trust that invests in a global portfolio of companies. Actively managed by fund managers, SMT aims to attain higher returns than the FTSE All-World Index over a five-year rolling period.

As of 31 December 2021, the top 10 constituents of SMT are: Moderna, ASML, Illumina, Tesla Inc., Tencent, NVIDIA, Meituan, Delivery Hero, NIO and Kering. The majority of SMTs portfolio is held in equities. SMT has a 30% cap on investing in companies that aren’t publicly traded.  

SMT’s top-three investment avenues are technology, healthcare and discretionary consumer sectors. More than half of the Scottish Trust’s investments are in US equities, followed by Chinese equities, European equities and UK equities.

Investment trusts ensure regular dividend payments to their investors – they can withhold up to 15% of investment returns to be paid out as dividends. SMT has cut its dividend only once – in 1933 due to the impact of the Great Depression. Most recently, in 2021, it paid interim and final dividends of 1.52 and 1.97, respectively.