Savers lose half their money as UK’s highest-flying Isa fund crashes

The Seraphim Space Investment Trust was launched with great fanfare last summer as a UK-based fund focused on space technology.

It raised £178.4million via in oversubscribed initial public offering (IPO) and enjoyed immediate lift off.

The share price jumped from 102p to more than 130p in just two months, a rise of 27.5 percent.

It has been all crashing back to earth ever since. A seraph is a celestial or heavenly being but this one has had a hellish year, plummeting 61.99 percent so far in 2022.

That makes it one of the worst performers of all, with investors losing almost two thirds of their money, depending on when they bought it.

It’s a far cry from the optimism surrounding the launch, when Seraphim Space’s chair Will Whitehorn declared the fund had “hit the ground running”.

He said: “We fully expect Seraphim Space Investment Trust’s portfolio companies to be central protagonists in the space sector’s quest to help solve some of our world’s most pressing challenges.”

The pressing challenge Seraphim now faces is to turn this disastrous performance around before it crashes to earth.

The market has turned sharply against speculative investments like this one, Laith Khalaf, head of investment analysis at AJ Bell.

“Any investment fund dedicated to exploring the commercial possibilities of space definitely falls into the speculative bucket.”

Khalaf said the trust’s ambitions are high, but so are the risks. “Seraphim Space offers investors exposure to a niche set of companies, many of them very early stage that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible to ordinary investors.”

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