The NAVigator

The NAVigator goes to Schwab IMPACT in Boston this week — the world's largest gathering of registered investment advisers — and meets with managers of two new interval funds in an area generating the most hype, interest and attention from investors, pre-IPO shares. Som Priestley is the head of global investment solutions, Americas, for T. Rowe Price and co-manager of the T. Rowe Price Goldman Sach...

Steve Baffico, Executive Vice President and head of listed products at Bluerock , discusses the fund's continuing transition and how making the move from a fund-of-funds to owning hundreds of individual properties is challenged by current market conditions. That has contributed to one of the widest discounts in the closed-end fund industry, currently standing above 40 percent, but Baffico explains...

John Cole Scott, President of CEF Advisors , discusses a topsy-turvy third quarter for closed-end funds, in which prices fell roughly twice as far as the portfolios underneath them, but income mostly held up. Scott, who also serves as chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance , says that resulting widening of discounts was particularly noticeable in taxable bond funds, which reached "the...

Nathan Shetty, Chief Investment Officer at SEI , discusses the evolving role of alternative investments, which have been de-emphasized by the media and financial planners due to the success of traditional equities. Shetty notes that sticky inflation and unpredictable interest rates are shifting the way alternatives can serve portfolios now, and says the focus should be on complementing equity stra...

With Anthropic preparing to launch an initial public offering that could value the company at over $2 trillion, John Cole Scott, President of CEF Advisors , looks at buying pre-IPO stakes in closed-end funds, interval funds and ETFs that invest in private markets, and says that getting exposure to Anthropic and other popular IPOs isn't the hard part, paying for the right wrapper is. Scott, who als...

Matt Kence, Portfolio Manager at Aberdeen Investments , discusses  the current state of the high-yield market and how it is responding to rising interest rates, noting that fundamentals remain surprisingly robust, with moderate levels of leverage and strong interest coverage. Kence, who manages the Aberdeen Credit Income Strategies fund (ticker ACP) says that defaults in the high-yield space have...

Young Choi, Portfolio Manager for the XAI Floating Rate & Alternative Income Trust , says there is more value and broad movement in the secondary markets for equity collateralized loan obligations, whereas opportunities in debt CLOs have been more specific and sporadic. Choi, the global head of trading at King Street and a portfolio manager for Rockford Tower, which took over as advisor for the XA...

John Cole Scott, President of CEF Advisors , answers listener questions today, including one from an investor with two closed-end funds that have been stuck with large discounts seemingly the entire time he has owned them. Scott, who also serves as chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance , discusses how discounts change a fund's risk profile, even if they never get narrowed, and how inv...

Business-development companies saw their share prices get hammered early this year as the market worried about an overexposure to parts of the software industry that could be negatively impacted by artificial intelligence. John Cole Scott, President of CEF Advisors , looked at BDC data before and since those problems and says it appears that fears of A.I. risk were exaggerated since "We're still n...

Rob Thummel, Senior Portfolio Manager at Tortoise Capital , says that for all of the power needs created by artificial intelligence, producers still need their power costs to be reasonable, and he expects that natural gas will lead the way going forward. Thummel, who runs Tortoise Energy Infrastructure fund , says current conditions for energy infrastructure remain the most favorable he has seen i...

Treasury rates hit their highest level in nearly 20 years this week; in response, the Treasury announced it was doubling its long-end buyback capacity. John Cole Scott, President of CEF Advisors , discusses what it all means for fixed-income markets and how it is impacting closed-end funds and their investors. The two actions at the center of the action call for a barbell approach, says Scott, who...

When closed-end funds catch mentions in the mainstream media, the recommendations often focus on yield without digging deeper. In this episode of The NAVigator, John Cole Scott, President of CEF Advisors , looks at some recent closed-end fund recommendations from articles on Forbes and Seeking Alpha, and breaks down how those funds do through the "trifecta analysis" his firm uses to select funds,...

Discount-capture investor Rob Shaker, Portfolio Manager at Shaker Financial Services , says that while closed-end fund discounts have widened through a strong season of earnings and a market returning to flirt with new highs, much of that action has been "good widenings," where a fund's net asset value goes up more than the price of the closed-end fund itself. With the market "snapping around" wit...

Scott Caraher, Head of Senior Loans at Nuveen , says that the higher-for-longer interest rate environment has created "one of the most interesting and dynamic times" he has seen for senior loans in his 25-year career. Caraher, who manages Nuveen Floating Rate Income in both its closed-end and open-end forms, says that because senior loans don't face interest-rate risk, they are a powerful play in...

John Cole Scott, President of CEF Advisors , provides takeaways from the second quarter for closed-end funds and business-development companies, noting that the trend was for investors to make most of their money on net asset values rather than narrowing discounts, which creates potential for a strong second half of 2026 if there is an uptick in investor sentiment. Scott, the chairman of the Activ...

Ray DiBernardo, Portfolio Manager for the XAI Madison Equity Premium Income fund, says he's concerned about the market's valuation levels — noting that it "has been expensive for quite some time" — and while he is not expecting "dark clouds and a horrible environment," there's more downside risk, which could lead to market compression that puts covered-call strategies back into the spotlight as a...

Axel Merk, President and Chief Investment Officer at Merk Investments , discusses Saba Capital's activist campaign that got him ousted as portfolio manager and president of ASA Gold and Precious Metals Ltd. , a closed-end fund that was up nearly 200% last year but that still was branded with the label of being a "poor performer." Merk, who took over the closed end fund in 2016 and helped to nearly...

Kevin Dreyer, Co-Chief Investment Officer for value at Gabelli Asset Management , says that there are plenty of values left in a market that has returned to record levels, particularly when valuing stocks based on "what an informed industrialist or buyer would pay to buy the whole business." Dreyer, part of the team running Gabelli Equity Trust and some of the firm's other closed-end funds, says t...

John Cole Scott, President of CEF Advisors , attended the Private Credit Summit hosted this week in New York City by Dechert LLP, and came away with a sense that private-credit markets have not yet gotten to the overheated levels that could turn investor fears of a blow-up into a financial reality. Scott, also the chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance , discusses "stress tests" that F...

Ken Burdon, Partner in the registered fund practice at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett , discusses the Supreme Court's recent ruling against activist investor Saba Capital , a decision that could have a chilling effect on shareholder activism in the future. Burdon says the decision removes a key path based on the Investment Company Act of 1940 that activists took in pursuing cases over fund fees and st...

John Cole Scott, President of CEF Advisors , says that index discounts are wide when compared to their three-year history, which makes it important for investors to find names where wide discounts are supported by improving fundamentals. Scott, who also is chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance , says that both the national muni CEF index and the taxable bond CEF index have seen wider...

Steve Baffico, Executive Vice President and head of listed products at Bluerock , which runs the Bluerock Private Real Estate fund, expects the real estate market to benefit as money moves from private credit , business-development companies and direct-lending strategies in pursuit of something with "hard assets and low obsolescence." That HALO trade should drive growth moving forward; Baffico dis...

Gordon Hamilton, Senior Managing Director for Kayne Anderson , Portfolio Manager for the Kayne Anderson Energy Infrastructure fund, says that there will be a big call on U.S. energy infrastructure companies to meet global demand for propane, butane, crude oil and natural gas as the world gets through the current energy crisis created by war in Iran. Coupled with an energy "supercycle" driven by ar...

Bryce Doty, Senior Portfolio Manager at Sit Investment Associates , says that "the worst is over as far as yields going up," noting that the next shift could be down, but he calls the conditions "tricky" and emphasizes that investors "need to be in the right part of the curve." Doty's case hinges on oil prices;  if oil stays below $110, it's viewed as inflationary, but above that level "we have a...

John Cole Scott, President of CEF Advisors and the Chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance , looks at the recent issues in business-development companies, which got hammered in March as the market punished software investments, including lenders who made loans to software firms. While BDCs rebounded in April, they remain significantly down, and Scott discusses how the companies with the...