Discount Delver: the 10 cheapest trusts on 21 August 2026

Investment trusts offer a potential bargain thanks to their closed-ended structure. That happens when a trust’s share price is lower than the value of its underlying investments (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 it.        

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In this 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.

Moving property

The volatile, artificial intelligence (AI)-obsessed Manchester & London Ord (LSE:MNL) has topped a table otherwise dominated by sectors such as property and private equity this week.

Manchester & London has seen its shares struggle in recent week as AI jitters abound, although it is still sitting on a return of around 23% for 2026 so far. 

The trust, which once largely just bet on Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) and NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA), now has a smattering of much smaller but still decent positions across the technology space.

Top holding Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ:AVGO) accounted for around 11% of the fund at the end of July, with Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd ADR (NYSE:TSM) on roughly the same weighting. 

Other top holdings include SK hynix Inc ADR (NASDAQ:SKHY) and Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU).

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And yet it’s property trusts that appear most often in this week’s list of discount moves, with AEW UK REIT Ord (LSE:AEWU), Schroder Real Estate Invest Ord (LSE:SREI), Schroder European Real Estate Inv Trust (LSE:SERE) and Value and Indexed Property Income Ord (LSE:VIP) all in the table.

There hasn’t been any major news for these names in the last week, although the sector is still in the throes of further consolidation. 

AEW UK REIT stated in July, for example, that it was considering another offer for Alternative Income REIT Ord (LSE:AIRE). The trust has until 5pm on 28 August to either make an offer or stand down.

Schroder Real Estate did announce yesterday that it would appoint Peter Lowe, its head of UK real estate investment, to run the portfolio and replace Nick Montgomery. 

However, this is dependent on the completion of the “consortium” acquisition of Picton Property Income Ltd Shs GBP (LSE:PCTN) by Schroder Real Estate and LondonMetric Property (LSE:LMP).

Meanwhile, Schroder European Real Estate has put forward a proposal to go into managed wind-down, which will need shareholder approval.

Private equity and others

The discount moves have generally been pretty modest in the last week. 

But it’s interesting to see two big beasts of the private equity sector, HarbourVest Global Priv Equity Ord (LSE:HVPE) and Pantheon International Ord (LSE:PIN), make the list.

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Both seek to give a diversified form of exposure to private companies, in part by investing in other funds.

Beyond that, we see Caledonia Investments Ord (LSE:CLDN), Schroder Oriental Income Ord (LSE:SOI) and BlackRock World Mining Trust Ord (LSE:BRWM) in the list, if without any major news.

Source: Morningstar, close of trading 13 to 20 August.