Equities and Freeholds is one listed investment company - albeit one with a tiny market cap - buying into other LICs with a weighting toward banks investment and property trusts.E&F - the former Goldlink Capital Asset Management - is these days run by its executive chairman, former Rothschild fund manager Andrew Brown, whose company Tidewater owns 84 per cent of the shares.While the portfolio is minute, at just $2.25 million, Brown says there is value in the company remaining listed and it remains cheap to run.More interestingly, Brown wrote in the outlook statement that the company has in recent weeks further increased its gearing "at a time when the use of debt to purchase financial assets is being pilloried. There is a clear role for gearing against a sensible group of assets at the appropriate stage of the financial market cycle".About a third of the portfolio is in property trusts and lending, with the balance spread between LICs and hedge funds.Brown said yesterday that since balance date five weeks ago E&F had bought into entities such as APN Property, Milton Corp (a LIC heavily invested in banks), GPT, Magellan and Platinum Capital.