Closed-End Funds

IGR

bujia — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:45:52 GMT

Now back to 16% discount. Time to add more?

Gene

Floating rate funds

chamois — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 19:37:38 GMT

Am thinking about increasing my allocation to CEF holding primarily floating rate senior secured bank loans (as opposed to variable rate preferreds and converts). Do you think this is a good idea, looking forward at the economy and interest rates?

The ones I follow are up 80% to 100% YTD so upward weighting now may be tardy. I'd appreciate any nominations, if purchases at this point seem worthwhile. The CEF in this asset class that I currently track are BGT, EFT, JRO, PHD and VVR, together representing 5-6% of portfolio. TIA

JGT

chamois — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:38:31 GMT

Got a surprise fill on JGT today just before the close; anyone know of a reason, other than a 50K share dump and temporary rise in the US$ late this week, for a drop in this cef, which I find hard to evaluate anyway. TIA

Buying At A Premium

bujia — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:38:15 GMT

I would like to get this board's views on buying a CEF at a premium. The generally accepted thought is that a CEF should only be bought at a discount to NAV or at least for less than the average discount or premium. However, there are some CEFs that seem to invariably sell for premiums.

For example, since Dec. '08, DPD has been selling at a premium as great as 25% with an average of 10%. I sold it several months ago when its premium reached 15%, which is where it is now.

It is a non-leveraged fund with a reliable distribution of ~11% with only 4.5% ROC. Perhaps this is why investors are willing to buy it, even at premium. (Presumably they would add more if the premium decreased or if it went into a discount. In the meantime they are getting 11% on their investment).

I would appreciate the thoughts of members of this board regarding this question.

Thanks, Gene

BDV -Blackrock Dividend Achievers

Cool1 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:44:37 GMT

HI - I subscribe to Morningstar Dividend Investor and have noted that dividend stocks have been laggards in this rally since last March.

This is certainly true of BDV over the last 2 years! This leads me to think that maybe now might be a good time to buy it. The expense ratio is high, but not terrible, and there is no leverage. The stocks held in the portfolio are household names.

Of course, the entire market may retreat, and that is a reason to not buy any equities now.

Any thoughts on BDV?

SRO

SONNYELE — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:45:30 GMT

Does anyone have any new opinions on sro? Their price is at $1.00 today. What will it mean to shareholders if they do liquidate? I am holding 1000 shares that I bought at $14.64 many years ago. Once again is it a hold or sell?

bmt

economist — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:33:12 GMT

I contacted Black Rock about bmt and the events to be of Dec. 2010. They were uncertain whether the final pay would be $10 or the NAV less a fee. Does anyone have an answer to this?

VKI

chamois — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:17:33 GMT

Anyone have comment on this Van Kampen national muni. It is back to equilibrium discount, distributing at 7.5% seemingly earned, has built up about 3 months UNII and now trading at August prices. Maybe a candidate for increased distribution. Downside is AMT exposure in the teens. I don't see the move to INVESCO as very important. TIA

CEF selection process

Tans600 — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:28:02 GMT

New to CEFs and I need some info on CEF selection for income portfolio. I am considering between 8 and 10 CEFs for a diversified income portfolio of Munis (short & Intermediate), convertibles, preferred, Floating Rate, multi strategy bond fund, Global Growth, and us equity growth funds.

What would you consider the most critical selection criteria for selecting CEFs? What process of evaluation and elimination do you suggest?

I am familiar with cefconnect however the amount of info and what I should be looking for is a bit overwhelming

Thanks

Chevy

HTR

bujia — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:12:12 GMT

Any thoughts on HTR(Helios Total Return)

Was written up on Seeking Alpha today. Searched M* and surprisingly nothing written about it since 2007. Inception 1989.

Closed at 5.0, ~9% discount, 18% Lev., ~11% distribution(not sure how much is ROC as they report that yearly), AA+ mostly US mortgaged backed bonds, duration 3 yrs.

Gene

Tortoise Power and Energy Infrastructure Fund, Inc. (TPZ)

BOND100 — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:00:55 GMT

Hello,

This a new CEF, here is the link to the prospectus:

http://www.tortoiseadvisors.com/documents/TPZProspectus.pdf

Thomas

Slightly OT - SEA dry shipping ETF opinions..?

offgrid — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:32:36 GMT

hi all - this is an ETF based on the global dry ship index. I've been buying a bit, as I couldn't find anything quite comparable, and I like the idea of searching for out of favor sectors which could rebound as the economy heals. The individual stocks are too risky for me and time consuming to follow, and I'm pretty sure there is not a CEF equivalent?

This is more of a growth and recovery holding/story, but as earnings come back the yield could come up quite a bit (only less than 3 per cent now)

I realize this could take longer than a few months to pay off - I'm seeing it as a 2-3 year theme as of now.

your opinions and ideas welcomed, thanks!

DCW

antpetiti — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:32:43 GMT

Has anyone been looking into DCW? It showed up on my radar screen recently. The holdings are very interesting - especially software/technology. Discount is very sizable and way above its historical average; although the history is very short. N-CSRS is not all that bad considering the past couple of years. Annual Expenses are a bit high though. Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this one.

CEFConnect has launched

shreinstein — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:47:52 GMT

Looks pretty good on first glance.

http://www.cefconnect.com/

ETFConnect is still available.

JFP, A cautionary tale

oregonsage — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:08:43 GMT

Understandably we tend to dwell more on our successes than our failures. But it could be that we learn more from our failures. Recently, when looking to diversify my holdings with a floating rate fund, I ended up buying JRO. But, in the course of investigating several funds I also noted JFP a fund that has fallen on hard times. I gather that the fund had earlier had problems with leverage and in getting out from this had lost a lot of value. I noted that it had been at about $3 for some time and I decided to look under the hood and see what was left. I found a very limited number of mid-level banks. So few that it was possible to look intensely at each and I Googled each in turn and decided that most seemed quite sound. A bank that reports increased profits does not sound like one of those about to be taken over. I did note some problems but figured they represented only a small percentage of the total holdings. The yield seemed high enough to cope with possible failure of these banks.

My decision to buy JFP was also encouraged by the fact that it was a Nuveen fund a company I regard as one of the better ones and I figured, in view of the past problems with the fund, they would be watching over the fund closely to avoid further embarrassment. Further the low price of the fund meant that if other investors also came to consider it undervalued it a few cents increase would represent a bigger percentage increase than occurs with more expensive funds. This is a feature well known to those who invest in the so-called penny stocks.

I bought some JFP and the following weekend one of the banks whose bonds it owns was taken over by the FDIC. I was not concerned. It was one of the banks I had thought was questionable and it represented less than 1% of the value of JFP. Further I reasoned that if investors in CEFs over react as they so often seem to do they might drive the price of JFP down by more than the 1% or so that I thought was reasonable; thus presenting a buying opportunity that I would use to my advantage

Sure enough the market price of JFP dropped on the following Monday and the market price went onto drop 21% in three days. Now NAV is calculated daily and the initial drop in NAV was not seen until after the market closed on Monday. The surprise was that the drop in NAV was also large 6% in the first day but it went on to drop 27% in the following week. This seemed totally out of proportion to the less than 1% loss in the portfolio. It was so much more than I expected that I searched the web for an explanation. There was a deafening silence on the web. One site simply listed it without explanation as one of the three largest drops in value. No blogger picked up on it no discussion group mentioned it. The only mention I could find was a one day of negative comments concerning Nuveen on Yahoo message boards. I looked to no avail for any similar losses in other stocks that might explain what was going on.

Sometimes I like to think that I understand what is going on with the economy and my investments. When I am brought up short with the feeling that I do not know what is going on and I am losing or about to lose money then I have a simple rule GET OUT! Today I sold out of JFP with a 17% loss. I salved my ego by taking a long overdue gain in another fund that had reached a 52- week high in premium.

Why am I posting this story? It is not for sympathy- my investment gains far exceed my losses. It is not to find out what I did wrong nor is it to find out what really is going on with JFP. The reason for this post is to suggest to the many beginning CEF investors that seek advice in these discussions that first however carefully you research a possible investment there are still events outside your control and information that you may not be able to find. Accordingly it is necessary to spread your risks or as your mother probably told you do not put all your eggs in one basket.

Morgan Stanley CEFs raise dividend.... finally!

boulder — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:57:27 GMT

Dividend increased for IQI, IQT, IIM, IQC, etc (0.003 - 0.007)

DWS too increased dividend this month

FMY

chamois — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:41:03 GMT

Would one of you gentlemen who posted about this FIDAC CEF a short time back, please remind me why I bought a little. As I recall, the negative duration came from "interest only" strips from agency notes, making the CEF impervious to rising interest rates, but vulnerable to prepayments of principal.

There was another argument for the fund I can't remember, and a review of the NCRS didn't help. I've also reviewed the previous thread, but there have been subsequent events wrt MBS. The FMY discount has widened, and I'd like to review the risk/reward equation in light of anything new. TIA

Alpine Funds

bandit9497 — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:12:37 GMT

AOD and AGD both pay a very high dividend and seem to have the NII to cover the payout. The premium for these two funds is very high and would discourage most new investment. They have a low leverage.

Any thoughts on why the premium is so high?

AOD does participate in dividend capture. Okay in an up market, but can really cause an issue if the market turns down.

IQT

chamois — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:58:51 GMT

I'm again considering IQT, given its above average NAV discount and healthy UNII. I hold IQI and feel MS may be due for increased muni distributions. I believe some of the posters here own this CEF and throughts would be appreciated. TIA

Buying CIK. Maybe more?

richardsok — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:03:18 GMT

Just picked up a little CIK. 8% discount and 11% yield. No ROC that I can see and seems to be earning everything it's paying out. M* seems to give it high marks, and Merrill Lynch rates it a B-1-7, which means it should continue to generate the same or higher income. I'm recently retired and would hold this long term for yield

1. Would sell if price appreciated 50% down the road.

2. Would buy more on dips UNLESS I saw a big change that would appear to endanger yield or quality of earnings going forward.

QUESTION: Does anyone have any in depth knowledge or opinion of CIK that I should know before diving deeper in? Appreciate any informed insight. Thanks.

--richardsok

Getting to the Source (Capital).

Balthaszar — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 04:11:03 GMT

A while back, while checking out the “Old Timey” CEFs, I came across Source Capital (SOR) and was wondering why it has not come up for discussion recently. This CEF has been around for quite awhile and long term returns have been good. Let’s face it, its odd to see a CEF that has a NAV well over $40. It has often traded at a premium, but now it is trading at an above average discount of 16%. I’m wondering what I’m missing here.

All the best,

Hank

Merger of Cal munis BCL, BCK, BZA, RAA into BFZ

SoCalBob — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:42:08 GMT

Any thoughts on this Blackrock board proposal to merge a number of Cal muni funds by Q4 2009

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/BlackRock-Announces-Board-bw-15406409.html?.v=1

Fitch downrates three CEF ARPS

chamois — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:07:18 GMT

Three CEF had their auction preferred shares reduced from AAA to the new ratings indicated, as a result of new quality standards NRQ to AA, SRO to AA and UTG to A. A significant number of other funds are on watch pending completion of the sponsors' adjustments to use of leverage. --fitchratings.com

HPI

schmitzl1 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:53:11 GMT

I noticed the HPI distibution included a ROC. Is this a bad sign?

possible new research site

CashiusClay — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:11:54 GMT

hi all:

somebody informed me of this site which I think might be new? - I didn't have time to check it out thoroughly but I ran a few symbols - i.e CEFs and ETFs and it looked pretty good...

for us CEF and ETF investors might be a good replacement for the old etfconnect.com RIP.

have a great day everybody

oh...link below

http://www.etfdesk.com

best,

Chris M