This article looks at investment trusts and gearing, specifically the ability of trust managers to borrow money to invest. With the help of industry body the Association of Investment Companies, we have crunched some data on gearing levels in the investment trust universe. Overall the average levels of gearing for trusts which invest in equities has remained pretty stable with gearing levels...

Funds play a really important role in most investors' portfolios. Many of us may not have the time or the inclination to research our own investment ideas and would rather entrust a professional to pick stocks (and other investments for us).The strength of broad market indices, particularly global and US ones, has made it difficult for actively managed funds to outperform over the last decade...

International Biotechnology Trust (IBT) 716pMarket cap: £263.2 millionWarren Buffett tells investors to be greedy when others are fearful and take advantage of depressed prices. That in a nutshell is the investment proposition for International Biotechnology Trust (IBT), which sits on an 11% discount to NAV (net asset value).The discount is not quite as extreme as it was when we highlighted...

It's said there are only two certainties in life ? death and taxes ? and as it stands the world is steadily getting older, with not enough births or young people coming through to offset the increasing ranks of the middle-aged and old-aged.Moreover, according to the United Nations' latest World Populations Prospects study which came out earlier this year, the global population is likely to...

At the centre of the current boom in generative AI (artificial intelligence) is chip maker Nvidia (NVDA:NASDAQ).It designs some of the fastest computer chips in the world which are needed to run data hungry LLMs (large language models) capable of understanding natural language.Readers may be familiar with Nvidia's historical link to the gaming industry, but less familiar with the US giant's...

The biotechnology sector should be a major beneficiary of an ageing world population and strained government health budgets as companies develop new drugs to treat chronic diseases.After underperforming the major indices since the end of the pandemic, the NBI (Nasdaq Biotechnology Index) offers great relative value and the prospect of superior earnings growth.The sector trades at a 18% PE...

International Biotechnology Trust (IBT) 650pGain to date: 4.8%We said to buy shares in International Biotechnology Trust (IBT) on 1 June 2022 at 620.1p as there was an opportunity to buy cheaply into a sector that had been heavily sold off.Biotech can be a high-risk place to invest and so using an investment trust or fund is often a better way to get exposure as the risks are spread across a...