Closed-End Funds For Value And Yield

With high-yield safe-haven sectors like Utilities and Real Estate leading the market I thought it was time for me to take a peek at the CEF universe to see what kind of high-yield opportunities I could dig up.
For this analysis, I have created a sampling of closed-end funds in four groups. Within each group, there are 4-6 funds with diverse focus. The groups are Multi-Asset/Dynamic Allocation, Infrastructure, Emerging Market, and Equities. Within each group are a sampling of funds focused to help ensure as unbiased an analysis as possible.
Because CEFs are notorious for their lack of timely, clear, and easy to find information I had to get creative with my comparison.
To start, I compare year-to-date gains versus CEFs and the broad S&P 500 and between my sub-groups. I move on to the Zee Statistic and Discount to NAV as a means of gauging market sentiment relative to its discount and how that relates to its value today. Finally, the dividend. I look at the yield, average UNII and average UNII as a percentage of share price to help gauge dividend safety.
Infrastructure Closed-End Funds Lead The Market
Close-end funds have, as a group, been outperforming the broad if barely. The S&P 500 is up about 18% and my sampling of CEFs is up about 19.15%. Within the group, gains are not distributed evenly. Only three of the four are showing positive movement this year and only two of those are beating the broad market.
Of the two that are beating the broad... Read more