This article is part of Morningstar’s Guide to Investment Trusts, highlighting the benefits of these unique investment vehicles – busting the investment trust jargon, revealing potential pitfalls and celebrating those experienced managers who have earned the top ranking from Morningstar fund analysts.
An investment trust is a composite fund which is listed on the London Stock Exchange. Investment trusts are run by fund managers who typically invest in between 50 and 100 holdings – made up of stocks, bonds or alternatives or a mixture of all three. Trusts are closed-end funds, meaning they issue a fixed number of shares at launch, and then do not subsequently buy shares back or issue new shares, except in rare circumstances.
As well as a fund manager and team of analysts who manage an investment trust, as a listed entity a trust has an independent investment board. The board provides a unique layer of governance that has responsibility to act in shareholders' interest at all times, something that unit trusts do not have.