Around a third of the FTSE 250 today is made up of investment trusts. These are companies that invest in other assets, often other businesses.
Due to all the choice, it’s perfectly possible to build a diversified and high-quality portfolio through investment trusts. Here are two from the FTSE 250 I like in April.
Private markets
Schiehallion Fund (LSE:MNTN) is a newcomer to the mid-cap index, having joined in March. While it has more than doubled in 12 months, the trust remains 36% below highs reached back in 2021, when growth stocks overheated.
So what does this quirkily-named Baillie Gifford-run fund do? It invests in later-stage growth companies not yet listed on stock markets. Familiar holdings include SpaceX, TikTok owner ByteDance, payments giant Stripe, and Claude AI maker Anthropic.
What I like here is that Schiehallion is quite picky about which businesses it invests in. In 2024, it only made six new investments from more than 600 financing rounds it looked at.
We continue to judiciously deploy capital only into those companies that we regard to represent the very best private growth opportunities on offer.
Schiehallion Fund.
In the first half of 2025, net asset value (NAV) increased 9.9%, driven by top holdings SpaceX and Bending Spoons. The latter’s an Italian software company that buys and improves well-known-but-underperforming apps or platforms (it recently acquired Vimeo and AOL).
Another thing I like is that the trust’s willing to stay invested after a firm goes public. Funds like this normally exit their holdings to redeploy cash. But here we see listed stocks including Wise, Affirm, Chime and Tempus AI still in the portfolio. The aim is to capture more of a growth company’s lifecycle.
Looking ahead, one risk is that interest rates might be heading higher, which could put pressure on growth stock valuations. And while a successful blockbuster SpaceX IPO this summer could send Schiehallion shares flying even higher, the opposite’s also true.
Weighting things up, I’m bullish on this unique trust’s long-term prospects. The portfolio contains some exciting growth companies, including Anthropic, Revolut, SpaceX, Databricks, and UK self-driving software firm Wayve.
Out-of-favour stock
My second pick is Finsbury Growth & Income Trust (LSE:FGT), which focuses primarily on UK shares. Now, this one’s had a torrid time, falling 25% since January 2025. Over five years, Finsbury has declined 17.5%, significantly underperforming the FTSE All-Share index.
Admittedly, there’s a risk that the stock-picking skills of fund manager Nick Train may no longer be as sharp as they once were. Because many picks have performed very poorly in recent years, including Diageo, Fevertree Drinks and Burberry.
In 2026, the trust has been hit by the software sell-off, as it holds Sage, Experian, London Stock Exchange, RELX, Rightmove, and Autotrader. In hindsight, piling into so many software/data platforms was perhaps a tad rash.
Taking a contrarian view however, many of these stocks now appear fundamentally undervalued to me. Sage, for example, is trading at just 15 times next year’s earnings. Autotrader’s a mere 12.3 times.
On top of this, Finsbury itself is trading at a 7.3% discount to NAV. There’s also a 2.8% dividend yield.
Given the potential for turnarounds at key holdings like Diageo, Experian and Sage, I think the trust’s worth considering near 725p.
