When dull is good in income investing

Max King picks two investment trusts that should produce a decent income from “illiquid assets”.

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You need to be a specialist to cope with a lack of liquidity
(Image credit: bobonacus)

A key advantage of investment trusts over open-ended investment companies is that they don't have to sell assets in order to meet redemptions. When people want to sell the share price falls and the discount to net asset value (NAV the value of the underlying portfolio), if any, at which the shares trade, widens, but the portfolio stays intact. This makes investment trusts a very attractive way to invest in illiquid assets: because so many investors can't or won't hold them, they are generally cheap.

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Max King
Investment Writer

Max has an Economics degree from the University of Cambridge and is a chartered accountant. He worked at Investec Asset Management for 12 years, managing multi-asset funds investing in internally and externally managed funds, including investment trusts. This included a fund of investment trusts which grew to £120m+. Max has managed ten investment trusts (winning many awards) and sat on the boards of three trusts – two directorships are still active.

After 39 years in financial services, including 30 as a professional fund manager, Max took semi-retirement in 2017. Max has been a MoneyWeek columnist since 2016 writing about investment funds and more generally on markets online, plus occasional opinion pieces. He also writes for the Investment Trust Handbook each year and has contributed to The Daily Telegraph and other publications. See here for details of current investments held by Max.