What benefits do investment trusts offer investors that ETFs do not?

What benefits do investment trusts offer investors that ETFs do not?

As investment trusts and ETFs vie for a place in investors' portfolios, James Glover, managing director, within the J.P. Morgan Asset Management specialist pooled funds group, explores which is the better investment option.

As one of the earliest trusts of the 19th century once stated, investment trusts were designed ‘to give the investor of moderate means the same advantages as the large capitalists, in diminishing the risk of spreading the investment over a number of stocks’. Since then, the number of trusts in the UK has risen to nearly 400, providing exposure to equities, bonds, private equity, hedge funds, and numerous other strategies. The first exchange-traded fund (ETF) was launched in the US nearly a 125 years later, in 1993, and was designed to produce comparable returns with the S&P 500. For t...