the market. The only reason to pay up for active management is if you are going to get a market-beating return. Data suggest that your average investment trust has a far better chance of doing this than your typical unit trust. If you want to see the figures, you can read more about it here: If you want to beat the market, you can't ignore these funds . But this doesn't mean you can just pick any old investment trust. You still need to put in the legwork to find a decent one. Here's what you need to look for. Beware high fees High costs are the enemy of the private investor. High charges make you poorer. Over an investing lifetime they can take a large chunk out of your savings. So you need to look at how much the investment trust is charging you. This is not always as easy to find out as you might think. Unit trusts typically have an annual management fee of around 1.5% of the value of your investment. Total expense ratios (TERs), which include some other costs, are typically around 1.7%. But this is far from the 'total' price. It excludes things like the cost of buying and selling shares and other running costs. So when everything is taken into account, the cost of holding a typical unit trust is probably just over 2% of your fund value each year. The good news about investment trusts is that they are usually a lot