unit price is 1. Investment trusts are slightly different. They are closed-end schemes. Here the amount of money invested in the fund is usually fixed when it starts up. New shares are not issued when more people want to invest. Instead the shares are traded on the stock exchange. This means that if you want to put your money into an investment trust, you have to buy its shares through your stockbroker. It also means that the price of the shares rises or falls in line with demand for them. As a result, the value of an investment trust will not always equal the value of its underlying investments (its net asset value , or NAV) divided by the number of shares. Sometimes the shares are worth more: they are said to be trading at a premium to NAV. Sometimes they are worth less and trade at a discount . Unlike a unit trust, an investment trust can borrow money to invest. This can help boost investment returns when markets go up but it also increases losses when markets go down. This means that investment trusts that borrow more money can be riskier investments than those that don't. Unit trusts are far more popular than investment trusts in terms of the amount of money put into them by private investors. Yet we prefer investment trusts. Why? Quite simply because study after study shows that they not only beat unit trusts regularly over the long run, but they also frequently outperform