Discount Delver: the 10 cheapest trusts on 17 October 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.   

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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 £30 million in assets and those that are not available on the interactive investor platform. 

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Commodity duo Golden Prospect Precious Metal (LSE:GPM) and CQS Natural Resources Growth & Income (LSE:CYN) have moved from small premiums to trade on discounts of -6.9% and -4.0%. Both trusts are benefiting from the favourable market backdrop for commodities, with respective one-year gains of 146.2% and 70.6%.  

Geopolitical tensions and concerns over US tariffs have been leading investors to seek out safe-haven assets – with gold and silver both in high demand. Other drivers of both gold and silver include weakness in the US dollar, higher government debts, and fears that inflation will remain sticky.

For gold, another factor has been high amounts of central bank buying to diversify away from fiat currencies and US government bonds. 

Over the long term, silver has given investors more of a bumpier ride due to its wider industrial use. This means it has greater cyclical characteristics compared to gold. The changes from small premiums to discounts could reflect some profit taking following the recent strong run.

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For the rest of the table, there are only small discount moves ranging from two to three percentage points, with a variety of sectors featuring.

Of note is that private equity trusts remain out of favour, with Partners Group Private Equity (LSE:PEY) and Oakley Capital Investments (LSE:OCI) both featuring this week on respective discounts of -23.9% and -25.5%.

Our recent feature examined prospects for the private equity sector, explaining that while discounts have been at high levels for a couple of years, net asset value (NAV) performance is improving.  

Source: Morningstar. *Data from close of trading 2 October to 9 October 2025.