Alliance Trust reveals top investment trust choices for third quarter

Alliance Trust, a leading UK investment services provider, has published the results of its third quarter ‘Alliance Trust ISA Ranking’ for 2006.

The Alliance Trust ISA Ranking lists the most popular investment trusts that private investors have chosen for their ISA through Alliance Trust Savings, excluding investments in Alliance Trust PLC. The latest ranking shows a reshuffling of the previous quarter’s top two and lists five new entrants in the third quarter.

The new top choice in the ranking is RIT Capital Partners, which moves up from second place in the second quarter of 2006, followed by British Empire, which drops from first place. Caledonia remained the third most-popular choice with investors. RIT Capital Partners is also the most popular investment trust purchased through an ISA in the last seven years - from 1999 to date.

Malcolm Dodds, PEP and ISA Manager at Alliance Trust, said, " This ranking is a great snapshot of where people are investing at the moment and has seen quite a lot of movement over the year. The ranking highlights that private investors do stick with investments with encouraging performance but are also flexible and willing to try new options. They don’t shy away from emerging countries, such as India, and do switch into more conventional choices such as UK growth trusts.”

“These changes in investment behaviour show how important it is to have a wide choice of investment options for your PEP and ISA money so that you can adapt your investments according to your view of the market.”

There are five new entrants among the top 20 this quarter that did not appear in the previous top 20. These areJP Morgan Fleming Mercantile (number five); Perpetual Inc & Growth (number seven); JP Morgan Indian Inv Trust (number 13); Bankers Inv Trust (number 19) and Edinburgh Inv Trust (number 20).

Charles Cade, Head of Investment Trust Research at Winterflood Securities Limited said: “Net ISA sales through Alliance Trust during the third quarter of 2006 show that the most popular investment trusts remain RIT Capital Partners, British Empire Securities and Caledonia Investments. These are all non-benchmark constrained funds with strong track records, whereas demand for the more traditional Global Growth funds is mixed, with Foreign & Colonial IT notably absent from the top 20 best sellers.

“The popularity of property as an asset class is reflected in the high ranking of TR Property. Several UK Growth & Income funds also feature among the best sellers, including Perpetual Income & Growth, Merchants, Temple Bar and City of London, while the demand for yield is also reflected in the presence of two High Income vehicles: Shires Income and Glasgow Income. A year ago, Fidelity Special Values was among the top 10 best sellers, but it was a notable absentee in Q3 following adverse publicity over the retirement of Anthony Bolton at the end of 2007.”

Looking at the most popular investment trust choices from the last seven years (April 1999 – October 2006), RIT Capital Partners managed to maintain its top position. Witan Investment Trust is in second place while F&C Investment Trust holds third place.
Customers in the Alliance Trust Savings Select ISA can pick from more than 1,500 investment choices including hundreds of investment trusts, as well as equities, gilts and other fixed income investments. During the third quarter of this year, 55% of investors’ funds in the Select ISA were invested in investment trusts.

In the third quarter of 2006, subscriptions invested in all investment trusts through the Alliance Trust ISA rose 9% year-on-year, while investments in all the 1,500 investment choices available were up 5%.

The full Top 20 factsheet is available on alliancetrust.co.uk.