Murray International has become one of the largest investment trusts in the UK since it was set up in 1907. The company aims to achieve a total return greater than its benchmark (a composite index comprising 40% of the FTSE World UK and 60% the FTSE World ex-UK) through investing in equities and fixed-income strategies across the globe. Within this, the manager tries to increase the company’s revenue in order to maintain an above-average dividend yield Murray International’s management company, Aberdeen Asset Managers, has the view that markets are not always efficient and, therefore, it can generate long-term growth through identifying companies that are undervalued. This is often due to changes in management, business practice or the direction the company is hoping to go in. Since Bruce Stout took over the trust, 14 years ago, it has comfortably outperformed the MSCI World, delivering NAV total returns close to 360%. However, in recent times the trust has struggled to keep up with its peers, and 2018 has seen the trust underperform the MSCI World by a margin of 7.6%. The trust’s strong focus on quality companies and value means it has missed out on much of the liquidity-driven rally which has taken place since quantitative easing began. Given the manager’s view on the wisdom of current monetary policy this is not surprising; he most famously described QE as ‘economic vandalism’. With this in mind it is worthy of note that the trust has performed admirably during downturns, and in particular in 2008 and 2009, when it managed to avoid much of the decline present at that time and then bounce back to return almost double the growth of the index in the following year. Perhaps reflecting the popularity of Bruce’s view, despite the trust’s prolonged period in ‘the wilderness’, demand for its shares remains strong and it has rarely traded at a discount to NAV and the trust currently trades on a small premium.