Discount Delver: the 10 cheapest trusts on 21 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 five trading days. 

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. 

This week we ran the data to the end of Wednesday, with the table below reflecting discount movements from 13 August to 20 August. In the five trading days to Wednesday’s closing prices, the biggest discount move was at CT UK High Income, a UK Equity Income trust. It moved from a premium of 2.7% to a discount of –1%.

• The little-known ‘specialist’ funds that can boost your portfolio
• Benstead on Bonds: are long gilts at 5.5% a no-brainer?
• Two value buys – and why banks are still a bargain

Strategic Equity Capital was the only other UK equity trust to make the Discount Delver list this week, moving from a -5.96% discount to a –8.9% discount.  

The remaining trusts on the list this week all invest in illiquid 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. 

For example, Bluefield Solar Income Fund and NextEnergy Solar own renewable energy assets; and Literacy Capital invests in private equity.  

The trust with the widest discount on this week’s Discount Delver list is private debt fund ICG-Longbow Senior Sec. UK Prop Debt Inv, on a –43.8% discount. 

JPMorgan Global Core Real Assets, on a –22% discount, is in managed wind-down, where the investment manager is 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 13 August 2025 to 20 August 2025.