Like any financial article I look at them for the ideas and info gathering. Would I buy an IT just because the discount has widened in the last month? No.

But the article does make a fair few points of interest:

- Investment Trusts often suffer in difficult times and the premium/discount of share price to NAV can be an annoyance and a disadvantage to their structure, and a reminder of this issue with their structure. Not new to me. In addition to the reminder, it also gives me an idea of what happened after a shock event like Brexit and the magnitude for future reference, so another reference point in investment life.

- It asks the basic question: Does the fact that discounts have widened present an opportunity that wasn't there a month ago or at least was less attractive a month ago? Valid question and when I look around to see where the opportunities are of shares/investments that have suffered more than makes sense, investment trusts are one posssibility, and one I've wondered about

- It mentions a few IT trusts specifically I'm interested in: Finsbury G&I, City of London, Scottish Mortgage, Woodford Patient Capital. Scottish Mortgage I looked at a while back but didn't act as I hate paying preimums. This gives a nice little update reminder

- Interesting to see how different discounts have fared and how they now stand. eg Private Equity has widened the most by almost 10 percentage points. EMs are now over 19%. Obviously averages and not a signal to buy in isolation, but a useful prompt to look and do further research, and maybe drill down myself into some of the ITs in those areas

The biggest take-away for me though was that Neil Woodford's Patient Capital Trust has swung from its 7%+ premium a couple of days before to a 4%+ discount. Almost 12% points.
I've had an eye on this fund for over a year since it was first launched. One of the biggest disincentives has been the premium. That it's now at a discount, and has fallen 12% due to the discount alone therefore is very interesting news to me. Looking a little further, it's down over 16% in a month. The price is now in the early 80's compared to 100+ when I was interested to get in, but I decided not to as the premium made it unattractive.  

So while I don't really care about the quality of the article as a whole too much, there's a couple of points of interest for further research. May also look into EM ITs and private equity.

I've actually now added some of WPCT to my Singapore held portfolio after over a year's wait

So for me when the article asked the question: Does the fact that discounts have widened present an opportunity that wasn't there a month ago? or at least make something more attractive than a month ago? In the case of WPCT the answer was yes. No way I'm buying just based on the article. Obviously could go lower and the discount get worse, but recent events have been an important change, and I'd now be comfortable buying and holding long term with this as a tipping factor. My own research and thoughts over the last year or so are key, but it was a useul read

Just another of the dots in life to join or discard