Edinburgh Worldwide Investment Trust (EWIT) has a global growth mandate, and is managed by the Global Discovery team at Baillie Gifford. The trust sits in the AIC Global Smaller Companies sector, with Douglas Brodie at the helm of the portfolio. Douglas looks to identify companies which are small relative to their potential size, rather than small in terms of their capacity for growth. The managers do not seek to replicate the benchmark index, and the trust has an active share of 99%. As such, EWIT can – and does – experience volatility, although the manager attempts to limit this as much as possible through diversification, currently holding 115 holdings and always having exposure to a minimum of six countries and 15 industries at any one time. Douglas took charge of EWIT in January 2014, and performance has been strong during his time managing the portfolio. In particular, the last three years have seen the trust drastically outperform with returns of 68.2%, compared to returns of 21.2% and 25.3% from the AIC Global Smaller Companies sector and the benchmark index respectively. In comparison to the (arguably more suitable) peer group the AIC Global sector, the trust’s returns are equally impressive, outperforming by 33.3% over the same period. Currently EWIT is trading on a discount of 0.5%.
