Hi fellow EFers. In my quest to diversify from my preferred holding of Fundsmith, I came across Baillie Gifford Global Discovery Funds.

In some respect their strategy is similar to that of Terry S, but different in others.

Similarities with Fundsmith:
global, quality companies.
Focused on growth over long term
Low turnover (5% per annum)

Differences over FS
- emphasis on companies operating in industries with potential
for structural change and innovation
- does not exclude financials, energy, materials
- NOT consumer staples heavy
- focused on small cap


So I am wondering if any of you have an opinion on this fund.

Looks interesting - from what I can tell from the docs it's has a similar buy-and-hold, non-hedged, low turnover strategy, but focusing on smaller companies (as you stated).

It's quite a lot more volatile (as you'd expect), but the total fees are nice and low.

Thanks for pointing this out - I may consider it myself next time I'm looking to switch something.

Fms capo philmcr???

It's a tiny fund, total value less than the majority of individual holdings in Fundsmith, the companies don't fit the same criteria in any way, over diversified, initial charges, it's not for me.

tbh, i'm not really so interested in funds. and prefer instead just to buy the shares directly.

i still have a modest holding in fundsmith and regularly track FS USD performance and MCR_fund performance as a way to benchmark my own portfolio performance.

I just checked out the latest key investor doc and there are no initial charges anymore.

I still would not invest.
I generally ask myself 1 question, would I be prepared to invest 50% of my net worth in an investment, if the answer is no, then I don't see any point in investing 5% either.

Top 10 holding: Tesla Inc

Seems pretty much as "anti-fundsmith" as you can get, Tesla's yet to show any profit and stock's overhyped to the moon

but did you see when they bought Tesla? early 2013 at $36 per share

Irrelevant as it's not a company Fundsmith would buy & your paying todays price if you buy the fund. Recalculate the return if they had not been lucky & bought Telsa @ $36.

That is just one example of the kind of "discoveries" that the fund seeks. Obviously I am not expecting to get rich with buying tesla shares now

Exhuming an old thread here, did you invest in the Baillie fund in the end?
Did you have to invest via UBS?

I invested through my AJ Bell SIPP.

Hard to say what the growth is, as I've done it in a few tranches, but the 2018 investment is up about 50% and overall I'm pretty happy with it.

Makes a nice diversification from the large cap focus of Fundsmith while sticking with the buy-and-hold, stable growth based policy.

Edinburgh worldwide is an investment trust (purchasable in Degiro, Interactive Brokers etc.) with similar properties and also ran by BG.

I would do that before resorting to the very expensive UBS to hold your investments.

Bailie Gifford are about a lot more than just Tesla - their Japanese and Asia Pacific shares have been rocketing. Even the European Trust is up over 50% in the last year.

On the topic of Tesla, the big thing they have now vs 2017 is such a strong brand.

Not so long ago, if anyone thought about electric cars the example was the Prius. Then the Leaf came along and got a bit of a mention.

Now Tesla is basically the brand to beat, almost every article or comparison of electric vehicles is using Tesla as the baseline.

Warren Buffett often looks for this sort of thing - brands which are household names (or industry names for experts) have a big advantage in growth and cost of growth.

Not that Tesla isn't over hyped, it probably is, but there is also a strong base.

He looks for profits & R.O.C.E first, I don't think he will be buying Tesla any time soon.