28-May-2020: I've been looking at the Affluence LIC Fund, which holds nothing but LICs (listed investment companies). Daryl Wilson's latest "wire" on livewiremarkets.com, titled "A complete guide to LIC investing" was posted on May 22nd (last week) and can be viewed by clicking here.
Currently, the Affluence LIC Fund has FGG (Future Generation Global Fund) as its largest holding, followed by Blue Sky Alternative Access Fund (BAF) which is soon to be managed by Geoff Wilson's WAM Funds, and the third largest position is FGG's sister fund, FGX, the Future Generation Australia Fund.
The L1 Long Short Fund (LSF) makes up #4 and Monash Absolute Investment Company (MA1) is the fund's 5th largest position.
The average discount to NTA across all of the LICs held in the Affluence LIC Fund has now blown out to around 22% to 23%, which is massive. That means that at these prices, Daryl is buying $1 worth of assets at 77c to 78c.
FGG itself closed at $1.18, but it finished April at $1.125, while its pre-tax NTA was $1.4262, so there was a 21% discount to NTA in that $1.125 SP. Even at $1.18, that's a 17.26% discount to that April before-tax NTA of $1.4262.
While we're used to seeing double digit NTA discounts across many of the global and specialised LICs, those sort of discounts seem to apply to a lot more LICs these days than they have done in the past. I highlighted recently how varied the discounts and premiums were across the various WAM Funds' LICs, with two of them (WAM & WAX) still trading at high premiums, and others trading at various discounts. WGB (their global fund) was trading at the largest discount.
BAF, which will soon become WAM Funds' 7th managed LIC, is trading at a discount of over 30%. Little wonder it's Daryl's second largest position in his Affluence LIC Fund.
Disclosure: I hold BAF, FGX, WAM, WGB, WLE, and I'm looking to buy back into FGG shortly. I'm also looking at investing in the Affluence LIC Fund.