If you were asked to pick three key investment themes so far in 2026, what would you choose? Energy and oil, gold, silver? Probably. Tech and AI? Possibly, despite the volatility.
Conflict in the Middle East and Asia’s huge exposure to oil from that part of the world would likely mean you avoided Asia trusts, while the bumpy ride for many global stock markets this year and dialled down riosk appetitte would probably see you ignore private equity.
Yet, surprisingly, the best-performing UK investment trusts so far this year have primarily focused on Japanese equities, South Korean equities, natural resources, and, stakes in private businesses, through UIL (UTL), the successor to Utilico Investment Trust that now hunts for discounted private equity opportunities.
YTD leaders among UK-listed investment trusts
| Trust | Sector | YTD return | |
| 1 | Baker Steel Resources Trust | IT Commodities & Natural Resources | 52.90% |
| 2 | Seraphim Space Investment Trust | IT Growth Capital | 25.80% |
| 3 | UIL Finance / UIL | IT Flexible Investment | 25.50% |
| 4 | BlackRock World Mining Trust | IT Commodities & Natural Resources | 28.10% |
| 5 | JPMorgan Asia Growth & Income | IT Asia Pacific Equity Income | 26.10% |
| 6 | CQS Natural Resources Growth & Income | IT Commodities & Natural Resources | 23.90% |
| 7 | BlackRock Energy & Resources Income | IT Commodities & Natural Resources | 23.30% |
| 8 | JPMorgan Japanese IT | IT Japan | 21.60% |
| 9 | Schroder Oriental Income | IT Asia Pacific Equity Income | 20.60% |
| 10 | Schroder Japan Trust | IT Japan | 20.00% |
Source: Trustnet / FE fundinfo
What is driving the leaderboard
The table is not random; it is heavily concentrated in three themes. First, commodities and natural resources have been the standout winners, helped by a sharp rise in gold and firmer oil prices. Second, Japan has re-rated on improving sentiment and election-driven optimism, lifting both broad Japan and Japanese smaller-company trusts.
Third, selective growth-capital and fintech vehicles have bounced hard where company-specific catalysts were powerful enough to overwhelm the broader rotation away from expensive tech. Trustnet’s sector table shows Commodities & Natural Resources up 25.2% YTD, Asia Pacific Equity Income up 18%, Asia Pacific up 17.1%, Japan up 15.3%, and Japanese Smaller Companies up 15.9% by the end of February.
That matters because the best-performing trusts are not broad-market ‘safe core’ holdings. Most of the leaders are either highly cyclical, highly thematic, or heavily exposed to narrower pockets of the market. In other words, 2026’s winners so far have been driven more by factor and theme concentration than by plain vanilla diversification.
Short profiles of the top five
1) Baker Steel Resources Trust (BSRT) 118p
Baker Steel is the clear YTD leader, up 52.9% by the end of February. It sits in the Commodities & Natural Resources sector and aims for long-term capital growth through a focused global portfolio of natural-resources equities and related instruments.
The AIC snapshot on 9 March showed a market cap of about £121.9 million, total assets of £161.4 million, a share price of 115.0p, and a 24.4% discount to NAV. Its top holdings were concentrated in mining-related names such as CEMOS Group, Future Resources, Bilboes Gold Royalty and Tungsten West.
Why it has worked: this is the purest expression of the gold/mining/resources trade in the top 10. Trustnet explicitly linked its February surge to the rally in mining and commodity equities alongside stronger gold and oil prices. The trust’s concentrated portfolio means it can outperform dramatically when the commodity cycle turns in its favour, but that same structure also makes it one of the higher-volatility names on the list.
2) Seraphim Space Investment Trust (SSIT) 144p
A trust Sharesify analysed recently (read here) Seraphim was up 25.8% YTD through February and is one of the more unusual winners. It is a Growth Capital trust focused on a diversified international portfolio of early- and growth-stage SpaceTech businesses.
On 9 March, the AIC showed a market cap of roughly £321.4 million, total assets of £337.5 million, a share price of 135.5p, and only a 4.8% discount to NAV. Its largest positions included ICEYE, D-Orbit, ALL.SPACE and HawkEye 360.
Why it has worked: Seraphim combined momentum with improving fundamentals. Trustnet highlighted renewed investor interest in space and technology, while AIC-linked coverage pointed to a sharp uplift in NAV driven by valuation and contract gains at major holdings. This is a reminder that not all 2026 winners are old-economy names; some specialist growth trusts have rallied when portfolio milestones became impossible for the market to ignore.
3) UIL (UTL) 188.16p
Trustnet shows UIL Finance Ltd up 25.5% YTD through February; the AIC’s main company page is listed as UIL, a Flexible Investment trust managed by ICM. Its objective is to maximise shareholder returns by investing globally where the manager believes underlying value is not reflected in the market price.
The AIC snapshot on 9 March showed ordinary-share market cap of about £175.5 million, total assets of £266.2 million, a share price of 194.0p, and a very wide 34.1% discount. Top holdings included Horizon Gold, W1M, Resimac Group and Utilico Emerging Markets Trust.
Why it has worked: UIL looks like a classic discount-and-asset-mix recovery story. Its half-year report said NAV total return for the six months to 31 December 2025 was 29.8%, the share-price total return was 35.2%, and the discount narrowed from 37.1% to 32.4%. That combination of underlying NAV progress plus discount tightening is exactly the kind of setup that can produce outsized early-year gains in closed-end funds.
4) BlackRock World Mining Trust (BRWM) 935p
BlackRock World Mining returned 28.1% YTD through February, making it one of the biggest beneficiaries of the same macro backdrop that propelled Baker Steel. While I have not pulled a full AIC snapshot here, Trustnet’s ranking alone is enough to show it is one of the strongest performers in the UK-listed trust universe so far this year.
Why it has worked: compared with Baker Steel, BlackRock World Mining offers a broader, more liquid route into the resources upcycle. That broader diversification tends to reduce single-asset risk, but the trust still remains highly sensitive to metal prices, mining equities, and investor appetite for inflation hedges and cyclical value. It is essentially the ‘scaled’ version of the commodities trade dominating the 2026 leaderboard.
5) JPMorgan Asia Growth & Income (JAGI) 511p
JPMorgan Asia Growth & Income rose 26.1% YTD through February and sits in the Asia Pacific Equity Income sector, another clear area of strength in the 2026 tables. The sector itself was up 18.0% YTD by the end of February, ranking among the strongest AIC peer groups.
Why it has worked: this trust captures two winning forces at once: Asia’s equity rebound and the market’s renewed willingness to pay for income outside the US mega-cap growth trade. It also looks more balanced than the specialist commodity names, because its driver is regional equity exposure rather than a single macro factor like gold. Among the year’s top performers, it is arguably one of the more ‘investable’ winners for diversified portfolios.
Snapshot table for the five profiled trusts
| Trust | Main theme | YTD return* | AIC snapshot date | Market cap | Discount / premium | Yield |
| Baker Steel Resources | Mining / gold / natural resources | 52.9% | 9 Mar 2026 | £121.9m | -24.44% | 0.00% |
| Seraphim Space | SpaceTech growth capital | 25.8% | 9 Mar 2026 | £321.4m | -4.78% | 0.00% |
| UIL | Flexible, value-driven multi-asset | 25.5% | 9 Mar 2026 | £175.5m | -34.09% | 4.12% |
| BlackRock World Mining | Global mining equities | 28.1% | 9 Mar 2026 | £1,665m | -10.70% | 2.47% |
| JPMorgan Asia Growth & Income | Asia Pacific income equities | 26.1% | 9 Mar 2026 | £333.2m | -2.68% | 4.77% |
Source: Trustnet / AIC. *YTD returns are from Trustnet’s table published 2 March 2026 and reflect performance through 28 February 2026.
Important takeaway for investors
The best-performing UK-listed investment trusts in 2026 are telling a pretty clear story: investors have rotated away from the narrowest parts of the AI/software trade and into hard assets, Japan, and selected non-US growth niches with company-specific catalysts. That is why natural resources and Japan dominate the rankings, while many private-equity and growth-heavy trusts are clustered near the bottom of the same February table.
For portfolio construction, tactical winners are Baker Steel, BlackRock World Mining, and CQS Natural Resources (CYN)—strong performers, but heavily exposed to commodity prices and therefore prone to reversal if gold or oil cools. Potentially more durable winners are JPMorgan Asia Growth & Income, Schroder Oriental Income (SOI), and some Japan trusts, because their performance is tied to broader equity-market and valuation shifts rather than a single commodity spike. Seraphim sits in a third bucket: high-upside, catalyst-driven specialists that can work brilliantly, but only if the investor is comfortable with valuation risk and sentiment swings.
The biggest caution is that some of the year’s leaders still trade on wide discounts or are backed by narrow portfolios, which means their YTD gains do not automatically make them low-risk buys today. Baker Steel and UIL, for example, both still show large discounts to NAV, which can be attractive if sentiment keeps improving, but also signals that the market still assigns meaningful uncertainty to the underlying assets.
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