Discount Delver: the 10 cheapest trusts on 15 August 2025

Investment trusts, due to their closed-ended structure, offer investors the chance of picking up a potential bargain. Such an opportunity arises when a trust’s share price is lower than the underlying investments held by the trust (the net asset value, or NAV).   

However, a trust trading on a discount to NAV is not necessarily a buying opportunity. There’s likely a good reason why the trust is cheap, such as subdued short- or long-term performance, or poor investor sentiment towards how it invests.   

• Invest with ii: What is a Managed ISA? | Open a Managed ISA | Transfer an ISA

In our weekly series, interactive investor highlights the 10 biggest investment trust discount moves over the past week.

In total, nearly 400 investment trusts have been screened, with the data sourced from Morningstar. Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) have been excluded. We also strip out trusts with less than £20 million in assets and those that are not available on the interactive investor platform. 

Two investment trusts investing in Asian equities made this week’s Discount Delver list: Ashoka India Equity Investment (now on a -2.7% discount) and Invesco Asia Dragon Trust (now on a -9.3% discount).

Their discounts each widened by about 2.5 percentage points over the last five trading days.

Ashoka India has traded on an average premium of 0.8% over the past 12 months due to the popularity of Indian shares. However, steam has come out of the market due to trade tension with the United States.

Invesco Asia Dragon Trust invests across Asia and is the result of a merger this year of two trusts: Invesco Asia trust and the Aberdeen-managed Asia Dragon. The combined trust is managed by the Invesco team of Fiona Yang and Ian Hargreaves.

• The tech funds that have actually beaten the Nasdaq
• Watch our video: two value buys – and why banks are still a bargain
• Watch our video: why tech has another great decade ahead of it

As usual on our Discount Delver list, there were lots of trusts that invest in unlisted assets.

The investment trust structure, where the shares are listed and offer instant liquidity, but the underlying assets are a permanent capital base, means that trusts are a good vehicle for owning illiquid assets.

However, this can lead to periods where the share price can diverge from the NAV of the portfolio, leading to wide discounts, or less frequently, premiums.

In this category this week were: Literacy Capital (private equity); Pantheon Infrastructure (infrastructure); Value and Indexed Property Income (property); Renewables Infrastructure Group (renewable energy infrastructure); NB Distressed Debt Inv Extended Life (private loans); Eurocastle Investment (private loans) and Livermore Investments (private loans).

Of these, the largest discount currently is on NB Distressed Debt Inv Extended Life, at -30.2%. The biggest discount move over the past week was at Livermore, with a -4.7 percentage point move.

However, the first name on this week’s Discount Delver list was JPMorgan Global Core Real Assets, where the discount rose by -10.1 points. However, this trust is in wind-down, with the investment manager selling off assets and returning capital to shareholders. This means that there can be big swings in the underlying NAV of the portfolio.

Source: Morningstar. *Data from close of trading 7 August 2025 to 14 August 2025.