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Quite a few investments in my Self-Invested Private Pension (SIPP) are performing nicely in 2026. The standout is the Blue Whale Progress fund.
Imagine it or not, this fund returned 12.6% within the first two months of the 12 months (versus 3% for the MSCI World index). Right here’s a take a look at the way it managed to attain this.
A high-conviction fund
Blue Whale Progress’s a worldwide fairness fund run by London-based portfolio supervisor Stephen Yiu. It’s a high-conviction, ‘concentrated’ fund which means that it solely invests in a small variety of shares (Yiu’s finest concepts).
The place this fund has had lots of success not too long ago is within the chip house. Names within the portfolio right here embody the likes of Nvidia, Broadcom, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, SK Hynix, and Lam Analysis.
These shares are all benefitting from the worldwide synthetic intelligence (AI ) infrastructure growth. With corporations like Amazon and Google spending a whole lot of billions of {dollars} on AI infrastructure (the hyperscalers plan to spend over $650bn this 12 months), the chip corporations are seeing large income development.
One other firm within the portfolio that’s benefitting from AI spending is Vertiv. It makes cooling gear for information centres.
A successful gold inventory
It’s not simply chip/AI shares which can be driving efficiency at Blue Whale proper now nevertheless. Yiu’s additionally taking part in a couple of different themes. One is the rise in gold costs. Right here, he owns Newmont Company (NYSE: NEM) – the biggest gold producer on the earth.
This inventory’s on fireplace for the time being (up about 16% this 12 months and 165% during the last 12 months). And it isn’t arduous to see why.
In 2025, Newmont produced 5.9m ounces of gold. The price to provide this bullion was simply $1,358 per ounce (versus a gold worth of round $5,100 as we speak).
On account of the hole between working prices and gold costs, the corporate’s minting cash for the time being, with adjusted web earnings for 2025 coming in at $7.6bn versus $3.9bn for 2024. Zooming in on money movement, this was an all-time annual file $7.3bn in 2025, up round 150% 12 months on 12 months.
It’s value noting that Newmont inventory nonetheless seems fairly low cost as we speak (it has a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of simply 13), so it may very well be worthy of additional analysis. There’s no assure that it’s going to proceed to soar although – if gold costs tumble, its share worth might too.
Distinctive monitor file
I’ll level out that as a result of Blue Whale’s concentrated (it solely holds round 33 shares), it’s greater danger than a broad international fairness fund corresponding to a worldwide tracker. If Yiu will get his inventory picks incorrect, efficiency may very well be disappointing.
Buyers additionally want to pay attention to charges. By Hargreaves Lansdown, ongoing charges are 0.84%, so it’s costlier than a tracker fund.
I’m not complaining in regards to the charges although because the fund’s efficiency justifies them. Within the final three years, it’s returned greater than 25% every year.
Given the monitor file, I consider it’s value a better look.
