A manager of a global investment trust gets to travel the world, chase down new ideas in all sorts of interesting places, then do their very best to answer that question.
Tom Slater, of Scottish Mortgage investment trust, is one of those. He has to think big in terms of distance, and be as informed about Chinese internet businesses as the ones in Silicon Valley. And that can mean meetings with people like the founders or senior management of Amazon and Facebook.
Investment seeker: Tom Slater moved to California for several months to get a better idea of new developments in Silicon Valley
But Slater also has to peer very far ahead in time, seeing the potential in obscure and as yet unlisted businesses, and telling where more established companies like Google, Fiat or Prudential will be 10 years from now.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, that makes him someone keen to chat about topics as wide-ranging as genome research, electric cars, corporate IT and internet shopping.
The breadth of knowledge amassed by its managers has paid off for Scottish Mortgage investors. The investment trust is benchmarked against the FTSE All World Index, which it has thrashed over the past five years (205.4 per cent versus 91.3 per cent), three years (44.6 per cent versus 21.8 per cent) and one year (24.1 per cent versus 6.1 per cent). See performance charts below for further details.
We met Slater to find out more about how he does his job, and glean some of his tips about what the future holds.
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