The question every closed-ended fund should be asking: do we deserve to exist?

Answering the case for investment trusts

Investment trusts have long been under pressure from the open-ended fund market, which is often easier to access and offers the scale and liquidity the professional investment community increasingly requires.

More recently, trusts have also faced the threat of competition from the $10trn passive industry, which only continues to grow. In response, a closed-ended fund must look to its unique characteristics and use them to its advantage. Kepler's top five investment trust picks for 2019 The structure allows investment managers to take longer-term views, employ more concentrated, high conviction strategies, use leverage and to invest more readily in alternative or illiquid assets. If a closed-ended fund is not exploiting these characteristics to offer a differentiated investment propos...