The Diverse Income Trust plc (LON:DIVI) has announced that its Factsheet for the month ended 31 January 2026
Manager Commentary
The dividends paid by the companies listed on the UK stock market as a whole fell during Covid, and as yet have only returned to 2016 levels. In contrast, the trust’s ordinary dividends have increased every year since issue, such that its current dividends are now well ahead of the period prior to Covid.
This underlines that many of the companies held in the trust’s portfolio have continued to grow well, despite their share prices being held back for some years as investment flowed into large US technology companies.
Global stock markets have become more volatile recently. Hence, there has been growing interest by investors in diversifying portfolios over a wider range of different companies to spread risk. The share prices of companies that pay an income for example, tend to fluctuate somewhat out of sync with large US technology companies and so have been gaining more interest.
With income paying companies comprising such a large cohort of the London stock exchange, during 2025 this diversifying trend led to the UK stock
market indices containing the largest companies outperforming the US stock market indices.
During January, the share prices of many of the largest US companies, such as Microsoft, were volatile and continued to fall, underperforming the UK stock market Hence, the interest in portfolio diversification became more acute.
- The outcome was that UK stock market returns were strong again, and it outperformed the US stock market during the month.
- The market prices of precious metals (that can also offer diversification), rose quite sharply in January, with mining share prices rising substantially.
Both trends enhanced the Diverse Income Trust’s performance, and during January its NAV total return was 6.16%.
Gervais Williams & Martin Turner
30.01.2026
