Discount Delver: the 10 cheapest trusts on 9 October 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.   

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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.          

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. 

In the bad BOOK

Literacy Capital PLC (LSE:BOOK), a concentrated private equity portfolio, features prominently in this week’s table after warning that it could write the value of a major holding down to zero.

The fund noted in an update for the third quarter that “several issues have become apparent at Cubo Works in recent weeks”, with the Literacy Capital team seeking to remedy these. 

"We believe it is prudent to expect that the value of Literacy's holding in Cubo will be reduced to zero in the next valuation of the portfolio as at the end of September 2026," the team said.

That writedown translates into something of a blow for the portfolio, given that Cubo accounted for 8.6% of the portfolio at the end of June.

The trust did not elaborate on the issues at the provider of co-working spaces but argued that other holdings had performed well and described Cubo Works as “an outlier” in the portfolio, for two reasons.

“Firstly, it is one of just two Literacy holdings where the founder is CEO and majority shareholder - the other being Kernel, in which BOOK sold most of its stake in 2023.

“Secondly, it also did not generate positive operating cashflow due to its historical expansion and site roll-out strategy.”

Performance problems

We do see a handful of trusts in the table that seem less familiar to UK investors, from Parvus Energy Efficiency Trust (LSE:AEET) to Eurocastle Investment Ord (EURONEXT:ECT). 

But some widely followed names have again experienced some discount widening.

A regular of this series in the past year, private equity behemoth 3i Group Ord (LSE:III) duly makes another appearance with a 6.2 percentage point increase in its discount.

Shares in the trust have been largely on a downward spiral in the last year, thanks to concerns about its main holding Action, from weaker sales in France to a US expansion plan.

The shares have fallen by around 15% in the last month, though there has not been an obvious trigger.

Beyond that we see a mix of niche trusts in the table, from commercial property fund AEW UK REIT Ord (LSE:AEWU) to Cordiant Digital Infrastructure Ord (LSE:CORD) and RTW Biotech Opportunities Ord (LSE:RTW). 

Shares in all three are down over periods of one and three months.

There’s also an appearance from the artificial intelligence-focused Manchester & London Ord (LSE:MNL). 

The trust has performed well in recent weeks, though jitters about the extent of further tech gains may be setting in among some investors.