It should come as no surprise that the winner of our Most Consistent Investment Trust category, which looks at consistency of performance over a five-year period, should be the trust that has won the Specialist Investment Trust category three times in six years, and which came third this year.

In fact, this is the second year running that BlackRock World Mining Trust has won this award – although last year it was still named Merrill Lynch World Mining. This represents a considerable achievement as it focuses on a sector that is as renowned for its volatility as for its profitability.

Experience counts
The fund is managed by Graham Birch, head of BlackRock’s Natural Resources team, who has overseen the portfolio since its launch in 1993. It is a genuinely global portfolio, with holdings spread across all major mining economies and a widely diversified range of industrial and precious metals.

The trust has a simple objective – ‘to maximise total returns by investing in mining and metal securities worldwide’. And it has achieved this  with considerable success over the past 15 years.

Of course, the fund’s performance has been helped by the sustained boom in commodity prices over recent years. Birch notes that ‘Looking back over 2007 as a whole, commodity demand remained firm and, with supply again constrained, prices for most metals made new highs at various times and investors in the mining sector enjoyed a vintage year.’

Russian strength
Second and third places in this category went to funds focusing on Eastern Europe. Runner-up was the winner of our Specialist Investment Trust category, JPMorgan Russian Securities, while third place went to a trust that has shown up consistently in the top ten in both this and the Specialist categories in recent years, The Eastern European Trust.

Managed by Agne Zitkute of Pictet Asset Management, Eastern European Trust’s remit includes the whole of Eastern Europe, including Turkey, but its portfolio is currently heavily weighted – over 70 per cent – towards Russian stocks. Zitkute explains, ‘Russia remains the biggest overweight in the portfolio, as we expect strong performance once global volatility settles down.’