What your fund’s top 10 holdings don’t tell you

For all their talk of investing for the long run, active fund managers like to trade. Take Terry Smith for example, whose flagship Fundsmith Equity fund reported portfolio turnover of 51.8% in the first half of 2026. In his mid-year letter to shareholders, Smith said the fund had started building positions in 12 companies while exiting, or starting to exit, 13 others. For a fund whose investment mantra ends with "do nothing", that's a lot of activity.For investors in active funds, keeping tabs o