For me, Investment trust have outperformed. BUT I have been careful on my purchase value e.g I buy when they are below their average price/NAV AND I select strong performance over 1 yr, 3 yr, 5 yr and 10 yrs. SMT has outperformed over the long-term so I am guessing that you bought in on a high. I own MNKS (little brother to SMT) and it has performed exceedingly well for me. I chose it over SMT as it is more diversified and is less exposed to the high tech stocks that have suffered recently. Of course, both SMT and MNKS are long term holds, not for those that can’t weather a down year. SMT has certainly outperformed it’s global passive index (Global IT) over 10 years.

The two screenshots below are of SMT and come from www.trustnet.com

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I read this article only a day or so ago, and I think it provides good reading on the topic https://www.trustnet.com/news/745751...06ead-77298025

I do have one ETF (on the US exchange), and it is IGF which is an infrastructure fund. I purchased this as an ETF as I couldn’t find any Investment Trust that clearly outperformed the index. There are many listed trusts that are merely index trackers (and I have held them too until I wised up to the indicators, in fact, I think that my Merchants is barely better that tracking the FTSE100 but it is more reliable in a downmarket and has a better yield and 130 yr strong performance history).