Are investment trusts the new Japanese equities?

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For me there is no sensible reason why their share prices trade at a discount to NAV

Despite having no clue about finance, my first job was in asset management. I more or less understood that most of my new colleagues ran money for institutions: a US pension fund here, a UK charity over there. But we also had a guy who managed an investment trust. I had no idea what that was. He would talk about the beauty of closed-end funds before rushing off to yet another presentation to his trustees. And then lunch. Lots of lunches, if I recall. Investment trusts remain a mystery to me now.

More sellers than buyers of the shares, say experts. Well, that’s impossible for starters, and misses the point that when they do trade, they do so at a price that’s below the value of the assets in the trust. Why on earth would they do that? A lack of faith in the manager? Again that’s a popular but illogical excuse. Even if a monkey was running your investment trust, it could be trained to press “sell”, at which point the true value of the assets would be realised and the discount closed.

 

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