By Harvey Jones
Publication Date: 2026-01-31 07:00:00
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Scottish Mortgage (LSE: SMT) shares have been plugging along nicely lately, although I wouldn’t say they’re flying. With 12-month growth of 18.6%, they’re trailing the FTSE 100’s solid 20% growth and the yield is lower too.
For a tech-focused investment trust that can be highly volatile, that’s a bit disappointing. To be fair, technology isn’t quite the extravaganza it was, as investors fret about an artificial intelligence bubble.
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I bought Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust in the summer of 2023 and, being up 75%, I’m not complaining. But I haven’t forgotten the 2022 crash, when it lost more than half its value. I also remember comparing it with Polar Capital Technology Trust, another FTSE 100-listed fund in the same space. Polar Capital outperformed Scottish Mortgage across every timeframe and continues to do so, up 40% over the past year. Over five years, it’s up 118%, while Scottish Mortgage is down 3%.
Arguably, I backed the wrong horse. But now there’s renewed excitement around Scottish Mortgage because it was an early investor in Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Still privately owned, SpaceX is rumoured to be listing this summer, and it could be a monster, with valuations as high as $1.5trn being whispered.
That wouldn’t quite top Saudi Aramco’s $1.7trn listing in 2019, but it would come close. With ChatGPT owner OpenAI also expected to float, this could be quite a…