BlackRock Greater Europe Investment Trust - Planning ahead for increasing portfolio risk

BlackRock Greater Europe Investment Trust (BRGE) offers a broad exposure to European equities. It benefits from two co-managers: Stefan Gries (since June 2017, covering developed European markets, which make up c 95% of the fund) and Sam Vecht (since the fund’s launch in September 2004, emerging European markets, c 5%). The trust’s performance has suffered this year due to the market rotation away from high-quality growth stocks and the write down of BRGE’s Russian assets. Despite this, the trust has the highest NAV total return in the AIC Europe sector over the last three, five and 10 years. The managers are sticking to their disciplined bottom-up stock selection strategy and are looking ahead for the chance to increase the fund’s risk profile in anticipation of a sustained stock market recovery.