Barron's Make My Case

As my 20 regular readers know, I am a regular reader of Barron's on the weekend.  They have definitely had ideas that I have follow-up on (the TARP warrants for HIG-WT and BAC-WTA that I own for example) and then I always feel a little better when they write positively about a current holding.

This weekend they had an article about closed end funds (The Case for Closed-End Funds).  The article essentially says that many CEFs are trading at substantial discounts to their NAV (a point I have frequently made).  They felt that some CEFs that focus on Munis were particularly attractive.  They also profiled a couple dozen funds, including my CSQ.

Here is my go to source to pick CEFs (CEF Connect).  You can go to it and see where CSQ is a 10.7% discount to NAV (12 month average 7.7%) and has a 7.76% yield.  Then AOD is at a 15.3% discount to NAV (14.1% is 12 month average) and has a 7.8 yield.

There is a decent logic to their focus on Munis.  I have never owned a muni, but I am in a higher tax bracket, so the fact that they can be tax free actually is an important point.  If I just do a quick screen, here are a few that pop up as interesting:

More later...