Merchants Trust turns defensive to protect dividend yield record

Rotating towards telecoms and housing-related stocks

The Merchants Trust shifted its exposure away from cyclical stocks towards more defensive sectors in 2020 in an effort to help sustain its 38-year dividend growth record, amid growing retail investor interest for the investment company.

Merchants, which currently offers a dividend yield of 6.1%, has been adding to telecoms, tobacco and housing-related stocks at the expense of holdings in sectors where "it will take some time for dividends to recover" such as travel and leisure, manager Simon Gergel explained. "We came into 2020 with a slight cyclical bias [following] a general election victory for the Conservatives, where they got an 80 seat majority, which we felt would lead to more stimulus and a stronger economy," he said.  "When it looked like the UK economy was very clearly going into a recession, we took out so...