Investing to escape - Monks

To escape the rat race I'll be dependent on good investments.  I'll explain my portfolio structure later, but one of the elements is a Self Invested Pension Plan, or a SIPP.  At the time of writing the second biggest holding in my SIPP is in an investment trust called Monks.  I have over £20,000 invested in Monks.  In the seven months I have owned it, it has grown by 20%.

Growth is what Monks is all about.  I am not focusing on investment income at the moment as I am still in the rat race.  I want to grow the size of my investments as much as I can before I start depending on them as my only source if income in about a year.

So far I am really happy as an investor in Monks but it is sometimes worth reminding yourself, as an investor, what exactly underpins your trust... why should they have £20,000 of my money?

Monks is a "best ideas" investment trust which means they don't try to replicate any market by spreading their bets too thinly.  Instead they look for growth in four types of companies:


  1. Stalwarts - boring companies that have a great brand and "get rich slowly"
  2. Rapid Growth - Smaller nippier companies that are disrupting some established industry and, although already highly priced are likely to continue to grow in value
  3. Cyclical Growth - as the name suggests, investments that are riding cycles but with each peak of value higher than the last
  4. Latent Growth - investments are the team expect to mushroom due to some fundamental change in the company or the market


There are a lot of technology companies in their list of holdings (Amazon and Alphabet) and also a lot of Financial Services companies (like Prudential).

Like all my investments I'll hold them until the current uptrend reverses (I'll use moving averages to inform my decision).



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