Uncovering Trusts – BlackRock Latin American Investment Trust (BRLA): Volatility can provide compelling opportunities

In this episode, our director of content, investment trusts Milosz Papst provides an update on BlackRock Latin American Investment Trust. After giving a quick refresher about the company, he discusses the Latin American investment backdrop, where valuations look very attractive. He then highlights the importance of upcoming election cycles, before delving into the managers’ views about the prospects for the region. Discussion then turns to the trust, starting with the stock selection process, where favoured companies tend to be high-quality businesses at reasonable valuations, which may be overlooked by other investors. He then provides information about the portfolio, where the managers are happy to invest in some of the smaller and non-index countries, although it is important to understand that a large part of the portfolio is likely to be made up of Brazilian and Mexican stocks as these two countries make up around 90% of the MSCI Emerging Markets Latin America Index, which is the trust’s benchmark. He highlights a few of the largest portfolio holdings before discussing performance, which has been positive this year in both absolute and relative terms. To wrap up the podcast, he focuses on the dividend policy, where income is an important element of the trust’s total return objective, and highlights the discount control mechanism, which includes a tender offer based on the trust’s performance and average discount over a four-year period ending 31 December 2025.

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About Uncovering Trusts: Uncovering Trusts is a podcast run by Edison analysts, which is released every two weeks. Subscribe to hear analyst interviews on how investment trusts maximise returns while managing risks for investors.