Discount Delver: the 10 cheapest trusts on 27 February 2026

Investment trusts offer investors the chance of picking up a potential bargain thanks to their closed-ended structure. Such an opportunity arises 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.

A trio of private equity trusts make this week’s table, a sign that investors are continuing to give the sector the cold shoulder.

Two of the trusts that have seen their discounts widen - CT Private Equity Trust (LSE:CTPE) and Oakley Capital Investments (LSE:OCI) – have delivered solid returns over one year and significant gains over five years. CT Private Equity Trust is up 15.6% and 128.4% over those time frames, while Oakley Capital Investments is up 10.7% and 86.8%.

However, investor sentiment towards the sector remains tepid at best. It is hard to pinpoint the exact culprit here, although analysts have pointed to volatility in public markets (which can influence valuations on private assets), a pause in global IT spending in early 2025, the continued effect of earlier interest rate rises and a slowdown in deal activity for the private equity sector.

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HgCapital Trust Ord (LSE:HGT), which earlier this month was caught up in the software sell-off, saw its discount widen by three percentage points to -25%. Ahead of that sell-off its discount was around -14.5%. The trust sought to reassure investors about its prospects and launched a share buyback programme in the wake of the sell-off.

Elsewhere, there are no other sector themes among the crop of the biggest discount movers over the past week.

The biggest riser, Chenavari Toro Income Fund (LSE:TORO), jumped from a small discount of 2.5% to 7.5%.

It was a similar story of a small discount turning into a slightly larger one for second-ranked abrdn Diversified Income & Growth  (LSE:ADIG), which is in a managed wind-down process.

BlackRock World Mining Trust (LSE:BRWM), which has benefited from a strong spell of performance for gold and copper, also saw its discount slightly widen, from -5.5% to -8.75%.

Source: Morningstar, close of trading 19 February to 26 February 2026.