The NAVigator

Bob Marcotte, President at Gladstone Capital Corp. , says that government policies which encourage business investment and capital expenditures are creating outstanding conditions for the private credit market. In an interview at the Active Investment Company Alliance BDC Forum in New York City, Marcotte said that Gladstone is "very bullish" on the likely capital-expenditure cycle being spurred by...

Mitchel Penn, Managing Director at Oppenheimer & Co. — interviewed at the Active Investment Company Alliance BDC Forum in New York on Wednesday — says that credit losses for business development companies during the first quarter of 2025 were more than double the level they have been at for the last few years. Penn says some of that increase could be attributed to the market's reaction to governme...

Tonnie Wybensinger, Head of Government Relations for the Small Business Investors Association — interviewed at the AICA BDC Forum in New York on June 11 — discusses the role that lobbyists play in the legislative process and how current efforts to improve the tax treatment of business-development companies, as well as to level the playing field with mutual funds when calculating expense ratios for...

Michael Grant, Co-Chief Investment Officer at Calamos Investments — Co-Manager of the Calamos Long/Short Equity & Dynamic Income Trust — says that current market conditions have made it that bonds are no longer a natural working hedge for equities downturns, and the downside risk in terms of capital return can be greater in the bond market than in stocks. He notes that investors are over-exposed t...

John Cole Scott, president of Closed-End Fund Advisors — the chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance — discusses two mainstream media articles that purported to name "the best closed-end funds" and that were published right around the times when he appeared on The NAVigator and gave out his own investment suggestions; he digs into the data to compare how all of the suggestions turned ou...

Brian Griggs, head of portfolio strategy and solutions at Nuveen , says that investors have long had too much dependence on large-cap domestic stocks and an over-reliance on duration in fixed-income allocations, and he says that investors should address those pain points today to address macro-sensitivity caused by today's headlines. Using Nuveen's Nsights anaytical tool — a proprietary system tha...

Mark Gatto, co-founder and co-chief executive officer at CION Investment Group , says that private investments have been weathering current storms better than public companies because illiquidity translates to stability in times when the market is volatile. Gatto says these markets have highlighted what private investments do well, which should boost their attractiveness moving forward, with heigh...

Andrew Kohl, a Portfolio Manager with Aberdeen Investments — part of the team running the firm's Total Dynamic Dividend and Global Dynamic Dividend funds — says dividend-paying stocks are not immune from tariff concerns, and while investors often pick them for the income and don't want to make too many changes, it's important to to watch how the underlying business will be impacted by current cond...

Danielle Poli, Portfolio Manager at Oaktree Capital Management , says the credit market is delivering returns that are close to the historic gains for equities, noting that the current set-up is reminiscent of times in the early 2000s when credit "smoked" equities. With high-yield bonds earning around 8 percent and private credit showing significant demand, Poli says that credit can be more than j...

Bryce Doty, Senior Portfolio Manager at Sit Investment Associates , says that current market conditions have changed the opportunity set for investors, who now want to be trading up by unloading closed-end funds that have hardly moved in favor of issues that have swung more wildly, even if that means "holding your nose" on the quality of the funds you're buying. He says that he is playing NAV move...

John Cole Scott, President of Closed-End Fund Advisors — The Chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance — is back with funds that can fit the bill of giving investors confidence amid the current stock market chaos. After answering audience questions last week, he supplements those answers with three investment ideas, discussing the details of the "trifecta analysis" — covering data points...

John Cole Scott, President of Closed-End Fund Advisors — the Chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance — checks in on how closed-end funds have performed since the government's tariff announcement, particularly in bond funds, where the outlook for yields has put fixed-income markets under pressure; he also discusses discount levels, strategies that closed-end fund investors might use now,...

John Cole Scott, Chief Investment Officer at Closed-End Fund Advisors — Chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance — continues The NAVigator's ongoing effort to answer audience questions, this week digging into nuts-and-bolts issues like how to find the best closed-end fund in any sector , how to judge if a fund might reduce its distribution or change its term date, and how to size up expe...

Eric Purington, Portfolio Manager for the aberdeen Global Income Infrastructure fund says that large-scale infrastructure investors have raised billions to pump into the big names in the sector, the smaller private-equity firms and the middle-market opportunities have struggled to bring in capital. That has created an opportunity that Purington has taken advantage of for the last few years and tha...

Tony Rodriguez, head of fixed income strategy at Nuveen , expects the Federal Reserve to make two interest-rate cuts this year — he calls them "recalibration cuts," made to stabilize the economy but not in response to a hard landing — which will boost floating-rate assets like leveraged loans, collateralized loan obligations and more. Speaking at FutureProof Citywide in Miami Beach, Rodriguez said...

Roxanna Islam, Head of Sector and Industry Research at VettaFi, discusses PCEF — the Invesco Closed-End Fund Income Composite ETF — which she considers the bellwether measure of the closed-end fund industry, a parallel to the Standard & Poor's 500 but for a closed-end space that is rapidly changing. Islam talks about how the ETF — which recently celebrated its 15th anniversary and has $800 million...

Kimberly Flynn, President of XA Investments — which runs the XAI Octagon Floating Rate & Alternative Income Trust — discusses the development, growth and heightened demand in  alternative investments, as well as how current market conditions around rates, tariffs and uncertainty are hitting the loan markets. She notes that the current picture for leveraged loans involves healthy borrowers and mute...

John Cole Scott, Chief Investment Officer at Closed-End Fund Advisors — the Chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance — returns to The NAVigator in an ongoing project to answer audience questions, this week diving into the world of business-development companies. He sorts out the differences between BDCs and closed-end funds, explaining why some investors — himself included — analyze BDCs...

Richard Stone, Chief Executive Officer for The Association of Investment Companies — the British equivalent to the Active Investment Company Alliance — discusses the similarities and differences in the closed-end fund industry between the two countries, and how activist investors, most notably U.S. based closed-end powerhouse Saba Capital, have struggled to gain traction in boardroom battles. 

Jim Baker, Co-Head of Energy Infrastructure Strategies for Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors — President of the Kayne Anderson Energy Infrastructure Fund — discusses generating "excess free cash flow" that helped the midstream index generate gains of over 50 percent for fiscal 2024, an impressive gain that still actually lagged the total return of his fund. Moving forward — and despite a political c...

Christian Munafo, chief investment officer at Liberty Street Advisors — the manager of the Private Shares Fund — discusses how there are plenty of opportunities among late-stage venture companies working to make a splash in the artificial intelligence field, but how hard it is to find the transformational companies positioned to succeed. He discusses what he is looking for, and where he thinks the...

John Cole Scott, chief investment officer at Closed-End Fund Advisors — the chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance — brings his data and portfolio-management methods back to The NAVigator to answer questions from listeners, covering concerns for California municipal bond funds in the wake of recent wildfires, how a steepening yield curve will impact discount levels, why investors shoul...

Miguel Laranjeiro, investment director for municipal debt at Abrdn , says the appetite for muni-bond assets has been growing at a point when "tax-exempt yields look really attractive," with tax-equivalent yields running up to 6 percent for investment-grade bonds, an attractive option compared to corporate and other bond types. Laranjeiro notes that potential policy changes being discussed in Washi...

Larry Holzenthaler, Portfolio Manager for First Eagle Alternative Credit — part of the team running First Eagle Credit Opportunities fund — gives his outlook for credit markets in 2025, noting that after avoiding default troubles when rates were rising, it should be stronger now, with paper being particularly strong in private credit. Holzenthaler further explained why private credit benefits from...

Mark Gatto, Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer at CION Investment Group , says that the landscape for global infrastructure spending could be as high as $3 trillion annually worldwide, which is going to create an investment asset class that is consistent, that can overcome political challenges, and that has public and private investment opportunities with significant earning potential. CION...