F&C Investment Trust (FCIT)

F&C Investment Trust (FCIT) provides investors with a one-stop shop for exposure to growth assets, primarily listed equities, but also with a private equity allocation. The manager, Paul Niven, oversees the trust’s strategic and tactical allocation. As such, he ensures that the Portfolio stays well diversified across geographies and sectors, so that it is not overly reliant on any single driver of return, while also being able to adjust the portfolio’s positioning based on his market outlook.

This approach has enabled FCIT to outperform its average peer in the AIC Global sector over multiple time periods. For example, over the past five years (to 10/11/2026), FCIT has adapted better to changing market environments than most of its sector peers, particularly those with concentrated portfolios or strong stylistic biases, which have struggled when their holdings or investment styles have been out of favour with the market. However, as market returns have been highly concentrated in AI-related names since late 2022, FCIT’s emphasis on diversification means that the trust has trailed global equity indices over that period.

Since early 2025, Paul has been reducing his exposure to US large-cap growth stocks to increase investments in the rest of the world, with emerging markets having been the main beneficiaries of these reallocations. Paul has been vindicated, as emerging market equities outperformed their developed market peers over the past two years. As he expects this trend to continue, he has further added to emerging market equities since the start of the year.

FCIT’s Discount has been stable since our previous update (published on 18/03/2026), currently standing at 8.5%, while Gearing has been increased to 4.5% at the end of September 2026.