For an investment trust that prides itself on protecting capital first and growing it second, PAT has an unexpectedly concentrated portfolio. Its £1.7bn of capital was divided at the end of June between gold (8pc), just 18 carefully chosen shares (37pc), various types of bonds (54pc) and a small amount of cash.

If you are going to invest in fewer than 20 stocks, you want to be confident about your choices. You do not want to be placing a bet on a binary outcome. You want to sleep at night.

In the latest quarterly report, PAT’s managers referred to two recent purchases, neither of which I knew anything about and both of which exemplify this safety-first investment approach.

The first is Canadian National,…