Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust enjoys solid start to 2017

The value of the portfolio after the first six months of the year was £6.37bn, its latest report showed.

The Baillie Gifford-managed trust saw net asset value rose net asset by 17.5 per cent to 420.2p.

The FTSE All-World Index rose 1 per cent in sterling terms over the same period.

Scottish Mortgage’s portfolio is dominated by tech giants, with Amazon accounting for 7.7 per cent of the portfolio, Tesla 6.8 per cent, Alibaba 6.8 per cent Baidu 5.4 per cent and Alphabet (Google) 4.7 per cent.

The trust also has a sizeable portfolio of non-quoted business and highlighted the performance of Spotify.

Looking ahead, the trust’s managers, James Anderson and Tom Slater, are anticipating a healthcare ‘step change’ through the development of personalised diagnostics and therapeutics.

The trust is who drew parallels between the current crop of super rising stocks and where they see them appearing in the future.

Biotech equipment firm Illumina was the best performer in the half rising by 2.6 per cent.

Total returns over the past five years, which the company says is a better benchmark to measure its performance, amount to just under 223 per cent.

The interim dividend was held at of 1.39p, which is unchanged from the same period last year.

Because of the importance of its non-listed and non-dividend paying investments, SMIT has pondered reducing its dividend as it is not covered by income but said at present it is committed to this level of payout even if not covered by earnings.

That position will be reviewed again at the full year.