Scottish Mortgage (LSE: SMT) shares carried out effectively in 2024. After beginning the yr at 808p, they rose to 955p – a acquire of 18% (additionally they paid a small dividend).

Now, as an investor in Scottish Mortgage, I’m fairly pleased with that efficiency. Nonetheless, a number of different development funds I’m invested in generated increased returns for me.

Blue Whale Development Fund

One was the Blue Whale Development Fund, which is managed by Stephen Yiu. For the yr, it returned a really spectacular 28.2%.

Individuals typically evaluate this fund to the Scottish Mortgage Funding Belief. That’s as a result of each merchandise have a concentrate on development shares.

However there are some key variations. One is in relation to the variety of holdings. Whereas Scottish Mortgage has invested in practically 100 firms, Blue Whale’s invested in lower than 30 companies. So it’s a ‘high conviction’ fund (ie Yiu has quite a lot of conviction in his holdings).

One other is that Blue Whale has extra of a concentrate on high quality. Whereas Scottish Mortgage has invested in plenty of up-and-coming unprofitable companies, Blue Whale tends to put money into business leaders with robust aggressive benefits and excessive ranges of profitability (eg Visa).

Now, as with Scottish Mortgage, the expansion focus right here can result in volatility at occasions. When tech shares fell in 2022 as rates of interest rose, this fund underperformed.

I’m comfy with the volatility although. Since I invested on this fund in 2019, it’s finished rather well for me. And Yiu has confirmed to be an amazing inventory picker. One of many largest holdings proper now’s Broadcom and it’s flying on the again of the unreal intelligence (AI) increase.

Sanlam International Synthetic Intelligence

One other fund I personal that outperformed Scottish Mortgage in 2024 is the Sanlam International Synthetic Intelligence. I don’t have the precise return right here because the December factsheet hasn’t been revealed but, however Hargreaves Lansdown’s web site says it returned 27.45% for the yr to 31 December 2024.

This fund’s centered particularly on AI, a scorching funding theme in 2024. On the finish of November, the highest 5 holdings had been Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Tesla. And all of those shares generated double-digit returns in 2024.

Given its area of interest focus, I see this fund’a danger stage as fairly excessive. If AI shares lose their enchantment, this fund is more likely to underperform. I personally consider that the AI story is simply getting began although. So I plan to maintain this fund in my portfolio for some time.

I’ll keep on with Scottish Mortgage

Going again to Scottish Mortgage nevertheless, I plan to stay with the belief. That’s as a result of it provides me one thing totally different. Not solely does it present publicity to extra obscure listed firms akin to e-commerce powerhouse Mercadolibre and funds specialist Adyen, but it surely additionally provides me publicity to some actually thrilling unlisted firms akin to Elon Musk’s area enterprise SpaceX (about 5% of the portfolio).

I’ll level out that I see this product as the very best danger of the three talked about. This is because of the truth that it’s invested in quite a lot of unprofitable and/or unlisted companies.

So I’ve sized it appropriately. If it does expertise some volatility, my portfolio received’t be badly impacted.