Why I’ve picked Trojan Income to save for my son’s future

I think anyone who drives around in expensive cars for a living, making mindless, boorish and unoriginal jokes about their fellow countrymen, while being paid a vast sum by the taxpayer for their infinitesimal contribution to British cultural life, should be flayed alive and hung from Tower Bridge. In front of their ugly kids.

I don’t really think anything of the sort, and when you actually listen to he said it’s immediately apparent that neither does he, but who cares about that? Let’s talk about Trojan Income instead.

I bought this fund a few months ago, and watching its performance – alongside the few equities I hold – has been a demonstration of why it’s worth paying somebody else, Francis Brooke in this case, to manage money on your behalf.

The market this year has been a real rollercoaster for my portfolio. Any bad news, no matter how little it has to do with the companies I’m exposed to, takes all of my investments off the cliff with it.

On the other side of the coin – which could be a cent, a centime, a deutschemark, or a pig and two packets of cigarettes if things don’t improve soon – there is huge volatility on the upside too.

Whenever our neighbours across the channel and their Germanic chums look like they may have found a way out of their systematic debt poisoning nightmare, the FTSE goes through the roof and I feel like a clever investor all over again.

The sad part is that when things are looking up, it’s usually because I’m benefiting from the ravings of a FTSE which is quite, quite mad.

I’ve come to believe, while watching Trojan ticking slowly upwards during all this chaos, that Francis Brooke probably doesn’t share this lingering sense of self-doubt.

The fund has recorded 21 positive periods out of a possible 36 in the last three years, putting it among the front runners in the IMA UK Equity Income sector. Only six other funds out of 104 have recorded more positive periods and only one of those – Unicorn UK Income, which is largely focused on smaller companies so not a great comparison – is significantly ahead by this measure.

The fund also has the lowest volatility in the entire sector over three years except for CF KB Enterprise Equity Income, but investors in the latter would have lost 0.01 per cent over the same period while Trojan Income has returned more than 47 per cent.

In the shorter-term that vice-like grip on volatility continues. Trojan Income is again the least volatile fund in the UK Equity Income sector bar one, this time pipped to the post by Fidelity Enhanced Income – a vehicle that uses derivatives to smooth out the ride for investors – but again Trojan is the superior performer.

This astonishing ability to return the goods while keeping a lid on volatility is a real draw for me, and I suppose for most people – and it’s no surprise that this fund, like Troy before it, is attracting huge attention at the moment.

Brooke has been awarded an FE Alpha Manager Rating in recognition of his talents, and I’m optimistic that he will retain that accolade going into the New Year but this is a uniquely volatile market, and nothing is certain.

Whatever he’s doing I hope it continues. Apart from Barratt Developments (BDEV), which seems to float about between 80p and £1 every month or so in a rather lucrative fashion, the rest of my portfolio is not putting my son through anything – unless debtor’s prison counts.