Podcast

Axel Merk, chief investment officer for the ASA Gold and Precious Metals fund, says that gold prices are most tightly correlated to "the confidence the market has in the central bank to manage inflation over time," so gold's rally over the last six weeks...

John Cole Scott, president of Closed-End Fund Advisors and the chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance, tackles the biggest shopping day of the year closed-end fund style, talking about where discounts stand in general for the industry...

Bryce Doty, senior portfolio manager at Sit Investment Associates, says that muni-bond closed-end funds using leverage -- where the cost of their borrowings are effectively wiping out returns given current conditions...

Eric Purington, portfolio manager for the abrdn Global Infrastructure Income Fund, says that two mega-mergers outside of the infrastructure space -- deals involving upstream energy giants Exxon and Chevron -- have a lot of implications for...

Steven Perry, vice president at XA Investments, discusses the surge in activity and creation for non-listed closed-end funds, covering why money managers, including a number of prominent sponsors who have never been in the space before,...

Cheryl Pate, senior portfolio manager at Angel Oak Capital -- co-manager of the Angel Oak Financial Strategies Income Term Trust (FINS) -- says the banking industry's wild ride since the failure of Silicon Valley Bank in March has created "a market dislocation" in pricing for bank equities and debt,...

John Cole Scott, president of Closed-End Fund Advisors -- the chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance -- digs into his data to give a recap of the third quarter for the closed-end fund industry, noting that municipal bond funds and REIT funds particularly took it on the chin...

Roxanna Islam, head of sector and industry research at VettaFi, says that cautious retail investors have been looking for safety and yield and that while closed-end funds have traditionally filled that bill, investors in ETFs that buy closed-end funds have been avoiding a lot of the struggles by turning elsewhere to invest.

Robert Bush, director of closed-end products at Calamos Investments, says that with risk-free money from bank accounts and Treasury bonds at high levels -- and with leverage costs up in response to those higher rates -- investors can have a lot of choices for good income without ever considering closed-end funds.

Duncan Farley, manager of the BlueBay Destra International Event-Driven Credit Fund -- which Morningstar places at the very top of its peer group over its five-year existence -- talks about how special situations are plentiful in the current marketplace...