It has become traditional at this time of year to summarise our performance since New Year’s Day. Yesterday, we did so for our stocks and will look today at our investment trusts, but perhaps the most striking figure is the number of new trust tips we wrote this year: just eight, including one tipped in our Sunday column as opposed to the usual Thursday.

It’s not much of a boast, but our investment trust tips did at least do better than our stocks, which have lost an average of 1.9pc this year. The trusts managed a positive return of 3.9pc. But the FTSE 100, on a comparable basis, gained 4.7pc so we have underperformed, if only just. Only two of our eight selections lost money, however.

The best performer was Smithson, which comes from the same stable as the popular Fundsmith Equity fund. Smithson focuses on smaller companies than its longer-established sister and has gained 19.1pc since we made it our investment trust tip of the year in the first week of January. We quoted the views of Callum D’Ath of Brewin Dolphin, the wealth manager.

“I think Smithson is brilliant,” he said. “It is one of those investment trusts that you can buy and lock away.”