Having watched this film a number of times since it was released back in 1989, the fact that the film is now officially set in the past is one which makes me feel ever so slightly old. Even sadder is the fact that hover boards are not universal, there are no flying cars and while they are said to be in development I still don’t own a pair of self-tying Nike trainers.

All that aside, Back to the Future Day was a good opportunity for some nostalgia based press releases about things Marty should have done in 1985 to have improved his finances 30 years on. So instead of buying an Almanac on sports results of the last 30 years, he should have picked up a copy of the US FT and spent his time researching fund returns.

If he had, according to JP Morgan Cazenove when he returned back to 26 October, 1985 Marty should have put some money into the Capital Gearing investment trust. If Marty had been able to invest £100,000 on that date it would have been worth £464,058 some 30 years later, leading the Capital Gearing trust to top a table of 20 conventional investment trusts that are still around today. This is more than enough to keep his son out of trouble, put him through university etc.

Following on from this finding the AIC crunched some additional data which shows that a £100 investment into the average investment trust would have been worth £1,978 over 30 years to 30 September 2015.

The top performing investment trust sector over 30 years was UK All Companies, turning a £100 investment into £3,319, followed along way back by Global which would have turned £100 (provided Marty could have got to currency exchange) into £2,091. The table below shows the top five sectors.

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Top five sectors over 30 years	Return on £100 invested
UK All Companies	£3,319.50
Global	£2,090.87
UK Equity Income	£2,035.17
Europe	£1,976.74
UK Smaller Companies	£1,642.25

Source: AIC, using Morningstar data

However if he had wanted to make more money he could have just followed the Biff approach and used the Almanac, but maybe stayed away from predicting the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series in baseball. Despite making the playoffs, the film’s prediction of the Cubs lifting the trophy (for those who don’t know, the Cubs haven’t won the World Series in 107 years) ended with defeat versus the New York Mets.

Now, where’s my self-drying jacket?

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