Investing in investment trusts

Before you invest in an investment trust, it's important to understand the two main ways they differ from other types of collective investments like funds and ETFs.

Premiums and discounts

The total sum of an investment trust’s holdings, minus any liabilities, is known as its net asset value (NAV). One of the key things to understand about investment trusts is that you can buy them for less (a discount) or more (a premium) than their NAV.

This feature can seem confusing. But it happens simply because investment trusts are set up as companies and traded independently on the London Stock Exchange. Like other listed companies, the value of its shares depends on market sentiment – i.e. what investors think they’re worth.

For example, let’s suppose an investment trust has an NAV of £1 per share. If it was trading at 95p per share, you could buy it at a ‘discount’ to NAV of 5%. Conversely, if it was trading at £1.08 per share, you would be buying it at a ‘premium’ of 8% – i.e. paying more than the value of its underlying assets.

Buying shares in an investment trust at a discount is often billed as a good investment opportunity. But it’s not quite that simple. There are a number of reasons why investment trusts might trade at discount:

• Low confidence in the trust's management
• The sector the trust is in is struggling, or out of favour
• Fear of high liquidation costs if the trust was to wind itself up, sell off its assets and return the proceeds to shareholders

It’s rarer for investment trusts to trade at a premium. When they do, it’s usually because of demand for the expertise of the investment manager. But before investing in a trust trading at a premium, it’s a good idea to exercise caution.

You can find out the NAV and premium or discount for each investment trust on its research page on our site. Just remember that investment trusts are designed to be held for the long term – five years or more.

Gearing

The other big way investment trusts differ from other funds is that they can borrow money to invest. This is known as ‘gearing’.

Let’s say a trust raises £100 million from investors and borrows £10 million from the bank, meaning it has a total of £110 million invested. In this case the trust is 10% geared.

If the trust earns an investment return on the borrowed money that’s higher than the interest the trust pays on its loan, the gearing is good for shareholders, helping to increase returns overall. When markets rise, the share price of a geared trust will rise faster.

But when markets fall, a geared trust’s shares will fall further, which can be alarming. Over short periods of time, gearing can make investment trusts riskier and their shares more volatile than other investments.

There are, however, strict limits on how much gearing an investment trust can use. A maximum of 25% to 30% is common, though in practice most trusts don’t go this high.

How do I invest in investment trusts?

You can hold investment trusts in ISAs, SIPPs and Dealing accounts with us. Investment trusts can be bought at any time during stock market trading hours at real-time prices.

To buy an investment trust, you’ll need to open one of the above accounts if you don’t have one already. It’s easy to search all available investment trusts using our screener or order them by price, performance and other benchmarks with our quickrank tool.

There’s a £5.00 dealing charge when you buy or sell an investment trust online. Or you can invest regularly for £1.50. Our account charge for holding an investment trust is 0.25% a year (capped at £25 per quarter for SIPPs and £7.50 per quarter for ISAs and Dealing accounts), and you’ll pay an ongoing charge to the investment trust itself. Visit our charges and rates page to learn more.

Save regularly in an investment trust

We’ve a wide range of investment trusts you can invest in regularly – for a monthly dealing charge of just £1.50.

To set up regular investing, just choose your investment trust and how much to put in. We’ll buy it for you automatically each month – a handy way to get into the saving habit. Our regular investing page tells you more.