‘Should I change my 40-year strategy of buying British?’

For some younger investors, the market in London does not shine as brightly as its American counterpart. Last month, half of Britain’s top investment searches were for US companies, according to broker ETX Capital. But for more than four decades, Michael Williams, aged 90, has not strayed from domestic stocks.

“I avoided overseas companies when I first started investing,” said Mr Williams. “That is how people thought then – that foreign markets were a bit dodgy.

“When I started out, the interest rate on cash was very high. There was not much incentive to buy shares because you could earn a lot from the banks,” he said. “But those days are gone and I suspect they will never come back.”

Mr Williams, a former marketing manager from Kent, now has a portfolio worth £264,000, spread out over various UK-based income and growth funds. He said that so far he had rarely changed his portfolio but now feared missing out on opportunities that were simply not available on the London stock market.

“The markets have changed. Things like Bitcoin have come along,” he said. He said he would be open to dipping a toe in the water with a £500 investment in cryptocurrencies, but acknowledged that it would be a risky move.

“I’m not getting the returns I should be any more. I would like to grow it a bit and keep the mix of income and growth,” he added.

Daniel Bland Head of sustainable investment management at EQ Investors

Mr Williams has described himself as a fairly cautious investor, but his portfolio does not reflect that. With his exposure being predominantly to the UK markets, it does not have a sufficient level of diversification. Investing in other regions, such as the US, would reduce risk while allowing him to participate in other areas of growth that are not available here. For example, he could replace Trojan Income with the Trojan Global fund.

We think that investing in companies with superior environmental, social and governance characteristics will lead to better, and more sustainable, returns. The Ninety One Global Environment fund targets businesses around the world that will benefit from the trend to decarbonise.

Impax Environmental Markets, an investment trust, is another good fund and has a broader remit: to invest across businesses that are helping to solve environmental challenges.

Investing in cryptocurrency should be an entirely separate venture from his current portfolio as prices are very volatile. He will need to find a reputable trading website as it is an area ripe with fraudsters, so he must be careful.

If it becomes too much, but he still believes in the technology, he could invest in the Scottish Mortgage investment trust. This fund has a holding in Blockchain. com, the crypto wallet provider.

Scottish Mortgage is one of the best performing investment trusts and has returned 355pc in the past five years.

Edward Allen Investment director at Tyndall Investment Management

His funds have had a tough few years so change is due. There is a bias towards income, which has served Mr Williams poorly because of pandemic-driven dividend cuts. His best fund over the past five years has been the L&G UK Index tracker, since all his “active” choices have returned less than the market.

I am happy investing in UK stocks, given that they are trading at a cheaper level than US companies. The swathe of merger and acquisition activity in the past few months has suggested that there is value in Britain, so for a fairly cautious investor owning these funds makes sense.

Even so, my instincts scream out to diversify globally and add some different types of investment such as infrastructure, renewable energy trusts and perhaps even gold. He should also add some more growth-focused funds to complement the income ones.

I would add the Liontrust Special Situations fund, which owns UK small cap companies, and sell Jupiter UK Growth. He should sell down his income funds and buy a global growth fund such as Baillie Gifford’s Monks investment trust and some emerging markets stocks via the JP Morgan Emerging Markets investment trust.