MUTUAL FUNDS

Tom Slater, head of Baillie Gifford’s US Equities team reports on how visionary businesses are looking beyond current market events and thinking about the future.

Investment managers Lawrence Burns and Paulina Sliwinska share thoughts on future trends with Professor Brian Arthur.

The Baillie Gifford US Equities team believes extended research trips are a valuable way of gaining deeper insight into companies and disruptive industries. Kirsty Gibson recently spent time in the US finding out about Synthetic Biology.

Technological and societal advances are often predictable, at times, almost inevitable. Ultimately, they are exploitable for the benefit of our clients. Tom Slater explains why this is so when investing in US equities.

We think ‘long-term investing’ and ‘ESG investing’ are synonymous. That’s why financially-relevant ESG considerations are integral to our investment process. Baillie Gifford’s International Equity Fund shares its approach to ESG matters, suggesting that it is a natural part of assessing the longer-term risks to a company’s growth opportunity or competitive advantage. And, something that is hard to replicate via a check-list or passive investing.

Our lives are increasingly cluttered by information overload. And, as Iain Campbell explains, having too much data can hamper rather than improve the process of investing. The key is to ignore irrelevant noise and focus on the drivers of long-term investment returns.

Our ACWI Alpha team on why collaboration helps lead to wiser investment decisions.

Healthcare has improved exponentially over the last few centuries and is still evolving. Gary Robinson looks at some of the reasons he is excited about investment opportunities in this sector and other areas directly related to it.

In 2017, the Emerging Markets team wrote a paper called ‘Morbid Symptoms’, explaining why they were optimistic despite the confusion of political events in the West. A year on, Will Sutcliffe provides five more reasons to be cheerful about emerging market equities.

To build great businesses, company management should understand how a company’s culture can affect shareholder value. Gary Robinson looks at how having a distinctive culture can create great opportunities for those looking to invest in thoughtfully managed companies.

One ought to be an optimist to invest in Emerging Markets, but so very few analysts are. Baillie Gifford’s Emerging Markets team explain how they fly in the face of market inefficiencies in their search for excess returns.

Ewan Markson-Brown recently visited Jakarta, where he found a changing political and technological landscape which could see Indonesia emerge as one of the most exciting growth stories globally in the next few years.

While there is a move away from active management in the US, our US Equities team think it is misplaced. Technology-driven change is creating exciting companies in the US with exceptional prospects, thereby presenting opportunities for active, long-term investors to outperform passive investment strategies.

Active management in emerging markets - Claire Gillies and Andrew Keiller explain why it is important to be selective rather than follow the index and outline the potential rewards such an approach can bring.

Over recent years, India has created the world’s largest digitalised database of people. As Ewan Markson-Brown explains, this has enabled it to leapfrog other countries in areas such as banking, and should also increase investment opportunities.

Home to many of the world’s greatest companies, the United States should be the active manager’s dream. Not so for everyone, it seems. Swimming against the tide of passive and mediocre active investment strategies, Head of our US Equities team, Tom Slater, endorses a genuinely active, long-term approach to investing in the American dream.