Letters / A bubble about to burst?

22 February 2021 09:22

One would think that a return on investment of 53.6 per cent in nine months for Shetland Charitable Trust would be a cause for celebration, and a round of applause for our terribly clever investment managers (Charitable Trust make £159m gain on investments in just nine months; Shetland News, 17 February 2021).

However, a return like that is impossible without very significant exposure to the FAANG Index (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet – formerly Google) and may include exposure to Tesla and Bitcoin.

I assume that Baillie Gifford and Blackrock are still part of our chosen investment team, and they are both well-known (notorious?) for their interest in these areas.

There are many other investment managers who consider this exposure to be a bubble about to burst, with huge downside risk.

I implore SCT to instruct their managers to significantly reduce our exposure to this bubble risk, and take advantage of this totally fortuitous profit.

Alan Skinner
Cullivoe