3i Group PLC ex-dividend date Baillie Gifford China Growth Trust PLC ex-dividend date Barings Emerging EMEA Opportunities PLC ex-dividend date British Land Co PLC ex-dividend date Diverse Income Trust PLC ex-dividend date Fidelity China Special Situations PLC ex-dividend date Fidelity China Special Situations PLC ex-dividend date Maven Income & Growth VCT PLC ex-dividend date NewRiver REIT PLC ex-dividend date Patria Private Equity Trust PLC ex-dividend date Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust Ltd ex-dividend date Scottish American Investment Co PLC dividend payment date
You have a capital sum you want to save you for a special reason, your reason will be special to you
You could save in a cash isa, which may or may not be changed by the current chancellor. The interest you receive will be variable.
You could save within an isa, using a money market fund, where again the interest you receive will be variable.
Or you could buy a UK Government Gilt, where all gains are tax free if held within a tax free wrapper.
You want to save for 5 years and decide to buy
Cost to buy one unit currently £101.48, which matures on the 07/03/30 at £100.00
If you bought for example 10k of T30 the income yield will be 4.3%
£430.00 pa. If you re-invested the twice yearly payments into the gilt, considering the cost of re-investing maybe once a year.
After 5 years your 10k should compound @ say 4% p.a. into £11,700.
Interest rates will change during this time period but as long as you hold until maturity there is no risk as £11,700.00 will be returned which includes your capital investment of £10,148.00
· Total dividends declared of 8.43p per Ordinary Share for the twelve months ended 31 March 2025 (31 March 2024: 8.35p).
· Dividend cover for the twelve months ended 31 March 2025 was 1.1x (31 March 2024: 1.3x).
· The Board is pleased to reconfirm its full-year dividend target guidance for the year ending 31 March 2026 of 8.43p per Ordinary Share (31 March 2025: 8.43p).
· As at 13 June 2025, the Company offers an attractive dividend yield of c.12%.
· The full-year dividend target per Ordinary Share for the year ending 31 March 2026 is forecast to be covered in a range of 1.1x – 1.3x by earnings post-debt amortisation.
· As at 31 March 2025, the Company had declared total Ordinary Share dividends of £395m since inception, the equivalent to 76.26p per Ordinary Share.
Anyone who owned for TR may be disappointed but for dividend hunters they are well on the way to achieving the Holy Grail of investing in having a share that generates income and sits in your account at a zero, zilch cost.
As you can see from the chart, you may have to hold for a long time to print a profit, meanwhile the income from the Gilt is below the rate of inflation.
The retired investor, who is based in the south of England, has put the lion’s share of his portfolio outside his pension – £135,000 – into a UK government bond, known as a gilt.
Gilt holders receive semi-annual coupon payments from the UK government – which all but guarantees its interest payments – and the return of their £100 principal per gilt when the bond matures.
While this may appear an extremely cautious way of investing, the devil is in the detail. Gilts come in all shapes and sizes, with the ones closest to maturing offering very different risk and return profiles to those maturing way out into the future.
This investor has bought UNITED KINGDOM 0.5 22/10/2061
TG61 1.52%
– a bond maturing in 2061 and issued in 50p annual coupons per £100 bond. It was issued when rates were extremely low, in May 2020, but it now has a yield to maturity, which is the annual total return figure assuming the bond is held to maturity, of 4.25%, according to Tradeweb data. The running (or income) yield, which just accounts for the coupons collected and not capital appreciation of the bond, is around 1.7%.
The characteristics of this bond – low coupon and long maturity date – mean that it has a high duration, or sensitivity to interest rates. Its duration is 29.5 years, which compares with just 3.5 years for a gilt maturing in four years’ time, also with a low coupon.
A 1% change in interest rate typically leads to a change in a bond’s price equal to its duration. So, rates increasing 1% leads to a 29.5% drop in the price of this bond, with the reverse also true if rates fall.
This means that when interest rates rise, TG61 bond will fall more than other gilts, and when interest rates fall, it will rise more.
That duration has been on display recently, with the price of the bond plummeting from £93.50 in late November 2021, to £26.50 just two years later. It now trades at close to £30.
The investor said: “I am attracted to this gilt’s duration. Clearly if you look at gilts as an asset class, they have really underperformed recently. It was due to rates going from an all-time low, so gilt yields were minimal, to where they are today after a spurt of inflation.
“TG61 has fallen the most due to its duration. But what goes up must come down. As rates fall there is every chance that there will be a significant capital appreciation for investors buying at today’s prices. I’ve bought at an average price of £29, with yield to maturities of about 4.5%.”
By his calculations, if the yield on the bond drops to around 3.2%, which he thinks is likely to be a reasonable long-term interest rate for the UK government to borrow at, then that means the price of the bond will have to rise to £42, nearly a 50% capital gain on the £29 he has paid for the bond on average.
Benstead on Bonds: the four gilts investors are backing – should you too?
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He says that he is willing to wait for the gilt to reprice, which is one of the key advantages he has as a retail investor over a professional investor.
“There is a timing factor here, as rate cuts keep getting pushed back, but the first move from the Bank of England is likely to come soon, so it’s a good position to own now before that happens. It could work out in three months, or nine months or 12 months – I’m happy to wait and collect my coupons.”
For this bond to rally, interest rates have to come down. He says that an inverted yield curve – where short-term yields are unusually greater than longer-term ones – suggests a recession is coming. A recession would lead to interest rate cuts and a big rerating of his TG61 gilt.
“My cunning strategy is the inverted yield curve may imply a recession and equity market crash.
“Data shows that one in four mortgage owners could default on at least one interest payment this year. If that is the case, I can’t imagine any government (or the Bank of England) would keep interest rates high for any longer than is absolutely necessary.
“I also think that inflation is likely to come down further than many think. It takes 18 months for interest rate rises to flush through the system and, according to some observers, we’re only about one-third of the way through that process,” he said.
If he’s right that the gilt rally will happen alongside an equity market sell-off, his plan would be to put his profits from the gilt trade back to work in a cheaper equity market – truly selling high and buying low.
Will interest rates really fall?
But what could upset his plan? One possibility is that a Labour government comes in next month and ramps up spending, which could lead to higher inflation and interest rates.
“That is a risk,” he admits, but he counters that financial markets seem comfortable with a Labour government.
The investor got the first ideas for this trade after Liz Truss was elected prime minister and there was the “mini-budget” that caused gilt markets to collapse.
He realised that government bonds could be extremely volatile and represent good investment opportunities, while also paying investors to wait. He has been a dedicated reader of ii’s fixed-income content ever since.
Everything you need to know about investing in gilts
Benstead on Bonds: why gilt auction access is a win for small investors
“I see this as a tremendous one-off opportunity to benefit from a good yield and a significant capital gain. These opportunities don’t arrive very often,” he said.
Another advantage is that gilts are free from capital gains, meaning that any difference between the buying and selling price of the gilt is not touched by the taxman. The investor has some TG61 in his ISA, but the bulk in his General Investment Account.
The Simple (and Safe) Way to 15%+ Returns Every Year
From Dividend Stocks
Contrian Outlook
While most people are chasing big dividend payers right now, a small group of “hidden yield” stocks are quietly handing smart investors growing income streams PLUS annual returns of 15%, 17%, 21% and more.
So if you’re ready to grab fast dividend growth that could triple your retirement income and drive fast price gains in almost any economy, here are the 5 investments to buy right away …
If you’re trying to figure out which way this market is going to swing next …
If you’re worried the S&P 500 might take another leg down, just like it did in 2022 …
Or if you’re worried about a resurgence of inflation that could result in a deep recession …
Then I have good news: I recently uncovered 5 “hidden yield” investments that are poised to soar while dishing out solid income.
For example, there’s the ag play that has quietly returned 2,000% to shareholders that Wall Street has completely missed …
And another company that’s seen its dividend surge 425% in just the last five years ! And it’s STILL undervalued (for now!) …
Plus, an unloved biotech primed to treat rare diseases, 10,000 of which are known today (while only 5% of those have treatments). That points to massive growth, sending the dividend (and share price) soaring!
Together, these five dividend-paying stocks could almost serve as a standalone portfolio – one that you can look to for steady payments … growing retirement income … and solid capital gains year in and year out.
But before I get deeper into the specifics of each of these companies, I want to explain why …
These Particular Stocks Could
Grow Your Money 15% a Year FOREVER …
Doubling Your Portfolio Every 5 Years
You probably already know that dividends are responsible for a very large chunk of the stock market’s historical returns.
In fact, dividends have accounted for more than 40% of the gains produced by US shares since the 1930s.
But it actually goes much deeper than that.
My research indicates a certain group of dividend stocks can give you A LOT more than just steady quarterly payments.
I’ve discovered a relationship between dividends and price gains that holds the key to 15%+ returns per year from very conservative investments – enough to double your portfolio in 5 years, and it could provide 3 TIMES MORE INCOME THAN MOST RETIREMENT EXPERTS SAY YOU NEED.
See, everyone wants dividend stocks with good current yields.
It’s easy to scan a newspaper or financial website and pick out the stocks that are paying 3%, 4%, 8% or whatever number you might consider “good.”
It even provides some instant gratification.
But that’s NOT the right way to pick dividend stocks.
You have to pull back the veil and find out if those yields are actually supported by the company’s cash flow, earnings power, long-term prospects and other signs of dividend, and business, health.
You have to sift through the same company’s history to determine how long it’s been paying those dividends …
How consistently it’s been paying those dividends …
And especially the trajectory of those payouts …
Over time, has the dividend increased, decreased or remained flat?
If You Understand One Simple Fact, You Could
Make SERIOUS Money from Dividend Stocks …
My research has found selecting companies with long histories of dividend hikes IS one of the safest and most reliable ways to get rich investing in stocks.
But it might not be for the reason you think.
Yes, every time a company raises its dividend, you start earning even more money from your original investment.
For example, $30 in annual dividends equals a 3% return on your original $1,000 investment.
Later, if the dividends go up to $40 a year, you are effectively earning 4% on your original $1,000 investment.
And if the trend continues over time, you could easily end up earning 10% or even 20% a year just from rising dividends … because your original amount of invested money never changes!
This explains why some savvy investors are able to collect “hidden yields” – regular payments that are MANY TIMES MORE than the dividend numbers you see reported by major media outlets.
But that’s only part of the story …
The Market Quickly Covers Up These “Hidden Yields”
Handing You One Potential Windfall After Another!
For example, if a stock pays a 3% current yield and then hikes its payout by 10%, investors will typically see the new 3.3% yield and buy more shares.
In the process, they’ll drive the price up and push the yield back down towards 3% again.
I call this the “Dividend Magnet” because, over the long term, the rising payout pulls the share price higher.
Let me show you how this works in the real world with a well-known income stock like Procter & Gamble (PG).
PG typically yields around 2.5% a year, so as the firm has been growing its dividend every year, investors have been bidding the stock up to keep its yield in line with that level.
You can see this very clearly in this chart of Procter’s stock. The purple line shows the stock’s price over the last five years. The orange line shows the stock’s dividend going up each of those years.
As the chart shows, despite some ups and downs, PG shares rose more or less as fast as the company’s dividend payments.
Of course, I am NOT saying Procter & Gamble is a stock you should buy right now.
Its sales growth slowed a bit as inflation drove shoppers to discount brands over PG’s household hallmarks. A trade war could also hurt its margins, in turn slowing its payout growth (and by extension its price gains).
The important thing here is that although investors tend to fixate on stocks’ current yields – which are widely published and available – meaningful dividend growth can be a valuable source of “hidden yields.”
Let’s look at two more popular dividend stocks—AbbVie (ABBV) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)—to see the same thing in action. Both of these stocks have had nearly constant yields over the last 10 years.
Why?
Because their price returns have also closely tracked their dividend growth.
As you can see:
AbbVie increased its dividends 221.6% (green line) and its stock rose 248.3% (blue line) …
And JPMorgan’s dividends (in orange) jumped an impressive 212.5%, while the company’s shares (in purple) jumped 304.3%!
So the very best dividend stocks rarely show high yields because the Dividend Magnet pulls their prices higher with the increasing payments!
You can see the trend in the chart above. But most people never realize any of this.
But those of us who DO stand to profit handsomely and almost automatically!
It’s a simple three-step process:
Step 1. You invest a set amount of money into one of these “hidden yield” stocks and immediately start getting regular returns on the order of 3%, 4% or maybe more.
Step 2. Over time, your dividend payments go up, so you’re eventually earning 8%, 9% or 10% a year on your original investment.
Step 3. As your income is rising, other investors are also bidding up the price of your shares to keep pace with the increasing yields.
This combination of rising dividends and capital appreciation is what gives you the potential to earn 15% or more, on average, with almost no active trading at all.
So with “hidden yield” stocks, you just get into the right investments and let a proven system take your wealth higher and higher without much fuss at all. However …
If You Want THE BEST POSSIBLE RETURNS,
Look for One More Thing to Add Extra
Upside to Your Dividend Stocks!
I imagine you’d be pretty darn happy to watch your portfolio grow roughly 15% every year … doubling in value every five years … and creating bigger and bigger potential income streams along the way.
And as I’ve just explained, picking the right “hidden yield” stocks can do that without exposing you to outsized risks or can’t-sleep-at-night worries.
But what I’ve found is that adding in one additional criteria can point you to even bigger, faster upside from dividend stocks.
Stock repurchases.
Whenever a company buys back its own stock, it is basically improving every single “per share” metric that investors watch – earnings … free cash flow … book value … etc.
After all, if a company reduces the number of its shares by 50%, its earnings per share will automatically DOUBLE without any actual increase in profits.
I probably don’t need to tell you what should happen next …
Investors will quickly bid up the stock’s price to bring it back in line with the value it was trading at before.
Indeed, my research shows that simply investing in the right stocks that are reducing their share counts can help you beat the broad market’s performance.
Best of all, analysts expect record buybacks this year, as companies invest money they squirreled away during the pandemic into their own stocks.
But even now, there are plenty of firms buying back shares, and getting a nice upside kick in return.
You can see this by looking at the shares of Walmart (WMT), which has taken an impressive 17% of its stock off the market in the last 10 years, helping drive a 200% gain in the share price!
And that’s just one example. By targeting cash-rich companies that either continue to buy back shares now or have a long record of doing so you can set yourself up for HUGE price gains.
And you’ll do even better if you …
Combine “Hidden Yield” Stocks With
Buyback Programs. The Gains Can Be TrulyExplosive!
Let’s take a trade I recently closed to see the kind of returns this combo can provide.
Back in April 2020, as the world was shutting down, I recommended food maker Mondelez International (MDLZ). The stock hit my radar because it was quickly growing its dividend payments and management was aggressively buying back shares.
Specifically, Mondelez had reduced its outstanding shares by an amazing 12.3% in the preceding five years, and was nicely set to keep those repurchases coming.
Plus, the stock was still yielding around 2.6%, even after it had boosted the payout a massive 90% in the five years leading up to our buy!
All those things told me the stock could take off as the company continued growing its dividends and buying back more shares.
Sure enough, it played out just that way.
The company reduced its share count by another 4.6% over the next three years, while hiking its payout another 35%. The market quickly responded as that happened and the stock soared 38.5% in that span.
All together, we ended up with a 48% total return (with dividends included) when we sold in April 2023, from a “boring” blue chip stock!
Of course not all of my recommendations work out exactly like this one … some better, some not quite as well… but this example shows that there’s no need to invest in things you don’t understand … or guess about how some new product rollout or business development is unfolding.
If you find companies that are consistently raising their dividends at solid rates PLUS consistently buying back their own shares, you have the recipe for annual total returns of 15% or more.
That’s WAY better than what you can expect from a broad stock market mutual fund or ETF …
And it’s far more than what you’d get from most bonds or other fixed-income investments right now …
And it’s more than triple what the very best certificates of deposit pay at the moment.
In fact, since most experts recommend withdrawing 4% of your nest egg each year during retirement, it means your portfolio could actually be growing three times faster than you’d be withdrawing money.
Put another way, simply investing in the right “hidden yield” stocks at the right time could triple the amount of money you have to enjoy in your golden years.
Best of all, it can do so without taking on unnecessary risk !
Outlook brightens for investment trusts despite sector shakeout
13 June 2025
QuotedData
Boards get proactive as discounts retreat and investors return
Ahead of our 2025 Investment Trust Forum, I thought it might be worth looking at the state of the London-listed companies market. The message that I want to leave you with is that the outlook for the sector is pretty good. However, I am aware that some readers may need to be convinced of this.
A history of discounts
Let us begin with some history. A good place to start is the chart in Figure 1, which shows the median discount across all investment companies. Discounts are a good indication of sentiment towards investment companies. This is because, simplistically, they chart the balance of buying and selling interest.
Going into 2020, the mood was relatively upbeat. The investment companies that we were covering were trading on a median discount of about 5.5%. Then COVID hit, investors panicked, and discounts ballooned. If you were lucky/clever enough to go bargain hunting in March, you were swiftly rewarded. Central banks and governments stepped in to calm nerves, slashing interest rates and injecting stimulus into economies. In the autumn, we had confirmation that the vaccines worked, and the investment company IPO market re-opened.
Over 2021, the IPOs continued, but trouble was looming as the inflation rate started to climb. Going into 2022, it became clear that interest rates would need to rise. However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exacerbated the problem, triggering food and energy price spikes.
As investors were presented with more attractive yields on cash and bonds, the shine came off the alternative income sectors. This included areas such as infrastructure and renewables. Trusts that had traded at premiums for most of their lives found themselves on widening discounts. The problem was compounded by the cost disclosure issue that we have covered extensively.
The tide is turning
However, what is clear is that the tide began to turn again just over a year ago. Yes, interest rates did start to fall again, but I think we were also seeing the effects of the efforts that boards have made to tackle discounts through measures such as buybacks, tenders, mergers, wind-downs, and dividend hikes.
There was a spike in discounts again around ‘Liberation Day’, but Trump’s backtracking meant that was short-lived. The sector’s discount problem is not fixed, but things are headed in the right direction.
Some credit must also go to Saba for taking advantage of the deep value available within the sector. Its objectives may be self-serving and its methods crude, but it has poured money into the sector and reportedly is inspiring copycat investors to do the same. We are not there yet, (in fact, I am expecting more fireworks) but as discounts narrow eventually these activists will run out of targets.
But is the sector disappearing?
Three of the trusts that Saba targeted in its first wave of attacks (or perhaps second, if you count nudging European Opportunities to institute its tender offers as the first) are – or will shortly be – no longer with us (Keystone, Henderson Opportunities, and Middlefield Canadian). However, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to trusts leaving the sector.
2020 saw 8 new trusts launched and then 16 in 2021. However, the IPO market snapped shut in 2022 and, has barely reopened since (Ashoka Whiteoak Emerging and Onward Opportunities in 2023, Aberforth Geared Value and Income in 2024, Achilles Investment Company this year).
Boards often get castigated for inaction, but, with the exception of a few stragglers, this view looks grossly out of date. Boards have professionalised over the last decade, directors take their roles seriously and are busy – the discount control measures I mentioned above can eat up a lot of directors’ time. We have already seen 16 exits so far this year, and as I wrote in an article for Citywire a couple of weeks ago, of the 281 investment companies that we cover that are left, 38 are in managed wind-down, being taken over, or otherwise set to disappear.
The industry moves in cycles
That might seem worrying, but we have been here before. The industry moves in cycles. In the early 2000s we saw split cap mania and then crisis – an explosion of trust creation and destruction. Then, in the run up to the financial crisis we saw a swathe of often highly geared property trusts launched and a dramatic expansion of the hedge fund sector. The crisis killed off many of the property trusts and a few private equity vehicles. When it turned out that the hedge funds were not the defensive investment that had been hoped for, there was an equally dramatic rush for the exit. In the post GFC era of low interest rates, the demand was for income producing vehicles. Many of these failed even before interest rates started to rise.
As Figure 3 shows, the last gasp of the IPO market brought with it a number of vehicles that have struggled since. There are some gems in there, and some that are oversold and will recover if given time. However, launching in a period of heightened investor enthusiasm meant that life in a more normal environment was always going to be hard.
Unfortunately, the sector’s history often feels like one of boom and bust. However, if you look through the noise, there are trusts that are over 100 years old and have adapted to survive and thrive such as Alliance Witan and Scottish American, trusts that are focused on multi-decade issues such as climate change and environmental pollution – The Renewables Infrastructure Group and Foresight Environmental Infrastructure being good examples, and trusts that have leant into the flexibility afforded by the investment company structure such as JPMorgan Global Growth and Income. These survivors and innovators can form the bedrock of a sector that will be with us for many years yet.
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The FTSE’s filled with hundreds of dividend-paying enterprises. And even in 2025, with the FTSE 100 hitting new all-time highs, there remain plenty of high-yield opportunities for income investors to capitalise on. Supermarket Income REIT‘s (LSE:SUPR) a prime example of this, with a shareholder payout sitting at a whopping 7.4% this month. And as a cherry on top, the stock’s also trading at a near-10% discount to its net asset value.
The retailer’s landlord
As the firm’s name suggests, Supermarket Income REIT owns and leases a portfolio of 82 properties used by Britain’s and France’s biggest supermarkets. Its list of tenants includes Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Morrisons, Asda, Marks & Spencer, Aldi, and Carrefour. But it’s Tesco and Sainsbury’s that make up the bulk of the group’s rental income, at 43.5% and 30% respectively.
Investing in this sort of property has proven to be quite a lucrative niche. Large retailers tend to stick around for a long time. As such, the weighted average lease duration is around 12 years, providing ample long-term visibility into Supermarket Income REIT’s cash flow.
This business model makes management life easier in terms of capital allocation. But it also makes the dividend more reliable and predictable. So it’s hardly a surprise that shareholder payouts have increased every year since they were introduced in 2018 – even during the pandemic. And if the consensus forecasts from analysts prove accurate, this upward trajectory for payouts is on track to continue.
Needless to say, this sounds like a promising place to park some capital. Even more so, given the analyst team at Goldman Sachs has placed a 92p share price target on the stock, opening the door to some welcome capital gains. So what’s the catch?
Every investment carries risk
While Goldman Sachs is among the more optimistic institutional followers, even it’s identified some key risks worth careful consideration. I’ve already touched on the fact that over 70% of rental income originates from just two customers. This dependency isn’t likely to have gone unnoticed by the financial teams and Tesco and Sainsbury’s, granting them a fair bit of leverage when it comes to negotiating lease renewals.
On the macroeconomic front, there’s interest rate risk to consider as well. Like many REITs, Supermarket Income has relied heavily on cheap financing over the years. But now that interest rates have shot up, the cost of having a leverage balance sheet has also jumped, putting pressure on margins.
Having said that, the company doesn’t appear to be over-leveraged right now and considering the high yield paired with a robust business model, this FTSE stock could be a lucrative opportunity for income investors, making it worthy of closer inspection, in my opinion.
You decided to buy at 300p and the plan was to hold thru thick and thin, there will always be plenty of thin and simply re-invest the dividends back into the Trust.
If you had invested 5k you share would be worth 35k, remember to allow for inflation.
If you bought at 300p the dividend was 11p a yield of around 4%.
The current dividend is 29.10p a buying yield of nearly 10%.
