The NAVigator

Christian Munafo, chief investment officer at Liberty Street Advisors -- which runs the Private Shares Fund -- says that the perceived higher risks in challening environemnts like the one we are facing today often lead to attractive opportunities and oversized future gains, which makes current conditions attractive for private equity and venture capital investing. Munafo notes that private markets...

Scott Caraher, head of senior loans at Nuveen -- manager of the Nuveen Floating Rate Income fund -- says that the higher-than-expected increase in rates that has driven up borrowing costs has made credit selection 'more important today than it has ever been.' He notes that lower-rated companies can't sustain high levels of interest payments for long levels of time. As a result, Caraher says he is...

Chris Oberbeck , chairman and chief executive at Saratoga Investment Corp. , says that the balance of power in the lender-borrower relationship has shifted dramatically in the last 12 to 24 months, with banks now pulling back which is leaving private lenders with better terms and more power to insist on superior deals. Oberbeck notes that those conditions are putting BDCs generally -- but Saratoga...

Josh Duitz, head of global income at Abrdn -- manager of the Aberdeen Global Infrastructure Income Fund -- says that private infrastructure investments have attracted so much money that valuations have gotten off-kilter, creating an 'illiquidity premium' that 'makes no sense.' Duitz explains that publicly listed companies should have higher valuations  -- because investors value the liquidity and...

Eric Boughton, chief analyst at Matisse Capital and portfolio manager for the Matisse Discounted Closed-End Fund Strategy, says that while the stock market has roared this year, things haven't changed much with the closed-end fund space this year, meaning there are plenty of highly discounted issues, particularly in muni bonds and some other fixed-income spaces, as well as international funds. He...

Mark Asaro, director of investments at Noble Wealth Management , says investors should not think that a traditional open-end mutual fund is a good replacement for individual bonds. Without a maturity date, bond funds don't have the pull toward par of an individual bond. Closed-end funds, however, are immune to dilution from cash flows into the fund, thereby providing a stable yield that investors...

Kenneth Burdon, an attorney in the investment management group at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom says that  rules proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission that would dramatically change liquidity requirements on traditional mutual funds could result in a boom for interval funds. While noting that the proposals still have a ways to go before approval, Burdon says that they would,...

Kimberly Flynn, managing director of alternative investments at XA Investments, says that demand for alternative investments as a means of adding diversification to a portfolio has spurred tremendous growth in interval funds, whose limited liquidity makes them an ideal vehicle for many types of less-liquid securities. Flynn notes that there are 190 interval- and tender-offer funds in existence tod...

John Cole Scott, president of Closed-End Fund Advisors , discusses what he is seeing in the market now by delving into four of the investments he is using the most and weighing heavily in client portfolios. He notes that the recent bank collapses actually made a few of his favorites more attractive -- because the market got angry at the financial sectors, driving prices down -- but he also explain...

Mickey Schleien, managing director for equity research at Ladenburg Thalmann and Co , says that business-development companies have seen the rising interest-rate environment lead to higher yields, which has helped to offset declines in net asset value that BDCs have suffered as a result of the Federal Reserve's tightening monetary policy. He says that middle market companies have seen revenues and...

Chris Marangi, co-chief investment officer for value at the Gabelli Funds , says 'the new normal' is one where inflation is higher than the Federal Reserve's target of 2 percent and growth is below trend, but it is creating an opportunity for active management to shine to find the opportunities that exist beyond the seven stocks that have been carrying the market to gains this year. He particularl...

Doug Baker, head of preferred securities at Nuveen , says that while it is relatively common now to find preferreds with yields above 7 percent, the real opportunity for investors at the moment comes from looking beyond the yield. He says that preferred prices right now are at 'meaningful discounts' that are uncommon in the preferred industry, creating attractive entry points, particularly on pref...

Rob Shaker, portfolio manager at Shaker Financial Services , says that economic conditions -- the debt-ceiling debate, troubled banks, higher interest rates and persistent inflation -- have created a situation where the market isn't climbing the proverbial wall of worry, but rather a 'Wall of Meh,' and says that there is opportunity in the unimpressive current conditions, noting that long-term inv...

Duncan Farley, portfolio manager at BlueBay Asset Management -- which runs the BlueBay Destra International Event-Driven Credit Fund -- discusses how his fund produced a 20-plus percent gain during one of the worst years ever for the bond market, and how the fund can avoid regression to the mean thanks to market conditions -- buoyed by the changing interest rate environment -- that if properly man...

Matt Freund, co-chief investment officer/head of fixed-income strategies at Calamos Investments , says he expects interest rates to settle in and remain stable for quite a while before trending down; he expects more volatility in longer-term bonds, which will make it harder for investors to get comfortable lengthening duration ahead of rate cuts that, under good circumstances, should arrive in 202...

Jim Baker, managing partner and co-head of energy infrastructure at Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors , says that the energy transition -- the push away from traditional fossil fuels towards renewable sources -- will take decades, creating a long-term megatrend in the energy business. With the last few years of global turmoil highlighting the critical nature of energy and the importance of keeping s...

Christian Munafo, chief investment officer, in Liberty Street Advisors, which runs the Private Shares Fund, says there are two stories dominating the private equity markets, with high-performing well-financed private innovation companies being proverbial unicorns compared to less- differentiated, less-capitalized companies which are more prone than ever to failure due to conditions in the capital...

Host Chuck Jaffe attended this week's Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago and took the podcast with him, catching up with 'Super Mario' -- investment legend Mario Gabelli, founder of the Gabelli Funds , a long-tenured fan of closed-end funds, who discusses the pros and cons of the closed-end structure, especially as it relates to the Gabelli Equity Trust and the 10 percent payout he has m...

Roxanna Islam, associate director of research at VettaFi , says that exchange-traded funds that invest in closed-end funds give investors diversified portfolios -- and all the benefits of investing deeply in the closed-end space -- in a one-stop shopping wrapper. Islam says that investors worry about high fees in ETFs of closed-end funds, noting that CEFs tend to have higher expense ratios on thei...

Jonathan Mondillo, head of North American fixed income for  abrdn says that 2023 has been a year of wild moves in the municipal bond market, performing well in January before selling off in one of the worst months of February ever, setting up a March rebound until the banking crisis hit. Most of those movements have been driven by macro headlines, and Mondillo says that investors want to drill dow...

John Cole Scott, president of Closed-End Fund Advisors , discusses how and why investors might pursue private equity and debt using closed-end funds, noting that expansion of the industry and changes in structure adding share classes have made private, alternative investments much more accessible for investors. Scott -- who also is chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance -- He says the...

Cheryl Pate, senior portfolio manager at Angel Oak Capital -- co-manager of the  Angel Oak Financial Strategies Income Term Trust -- says that current problems in the banking sector are setting up a recovery, noting that 'opportunities like this are fairly rare, probably a once-in-a-decade opportunity for the banking space,' with the biggest opportunities being on the debt side as spreads start to...

Steve O'Neill, portfolio manager at RiverNorth , says the average municipal-bond closed-end fund has a discount of 10.5 percent, which over the last 25 years would be in 'the 99th percentile of cheapness.' While O'Neill makes the case for buying muni bonds, he says the case for closed-end funds is largely because of the discounts being oversized, noting that the rest of the fixed-income market has...

Bryce Doty, senior portfolio manager at Sit Investment Associates says that the problem at the heart of the current banking crisis is not a default problem, but rather is a logical outcome from how quickly the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. He expects it to keep impacting the value of fixed-income securities until things stabilize; that, in turn, will create more opportunities for closed-e...

John Cole Scott, president of Closed-End Fund Advisors says that -- despite a rough outing for business development companies this week -- BDCs have had a strong quarter from a total return perspective, and that prospects remain strong as BDCs have been raising their distributions but the dividend-coverage percentages have remained roughly steady, a sign that they're not only positioned well now b...