Equity CEFs: Which Fund Would You Rather Own?

By Douglas Albo: The following tables include year-to-date (YTD) and four-year NAV and market price performances for most of the equity based high yielding Closed-End funds (CEFs) available to investors, where "equity based" is defined as having at least 50% of a fund's portfolio invested in U.S. based or global stocks while "high yielding" is defined as a fund having at least a 6% annualized distribution.

Douglas Albo submits: The following tables show NAV and market price performances of the majority of equity based high yielding closed-end funds (CEFs) available to investors, where equity based is defined as having at least two-thirds of a fund's portfolio invested in domestic or global stocks and where high yielding is defined as 6% or over annualized market price dividend yields. Together, these funds represent over $38 billion in assets.

By Douglas Albo: Back on January 13, 2011, I wrote an article called "Which Funds Have a Real Return of Capital," which compared four high-yielding global stock Closed-End funds (CEFs) and how investors had misjudged which funds were really just giving back an investor's capital.

By Douglas Albo: This is the second of a two part series reviewing the Allianz/PIMCO equity based high yielding Closed-End funds (CEFs).

By Douglas Albo: There is nothing I despise more among Closed-End funds (CEFs) than a fund trading at a premium price over its NAV that doesn't deserve it.

Douglas Albo submits: Sometimes it takes a swift kick in the pants to remind investors the price they are paying for an investment.

By Douglas Albo: Are there still good values among high yielding equity based closed-end funds (CEFs) after this market run? Yes...but they are getting harder to find and this article is as much about identifying overvalued funds as it is about finding undervalued ones.

By Douglas Albo: In early 2010, I wrote an article titled "CEFs: Follow The NAV" in which I advised income investors in high-yielding equity-based Closed-End funds (CEFs) that if they wanted to find the best funds to invest in, they should pay close attention to the direction of a fund's Net Asset Value (NAV).