For the month, 90% of all closed-end funds (CEFs) posted net-asset-value (NAV)-based returns in the black, with 94% of equity CEFs and 88% of fixed income CEFs chalking up returns in the plus column. For the second month in three, Lipper’s domestic equity CEFs (+3.76%) macro-group outpaced its two equity-based brethren: world equity CEFs (+3.64%) and mixed-assets CEFs (+2.09%). The Utility CEFs classification (+7.46%) for the first month in nine outperformed all other equity classifications, followed by Developed Market CEFs (+5.26%) and Diversified Equity CEFs (+4.51%).
For the first month in four, the world income CEFs macro-group chalked up the strongest returns in the fixed income universe, posting a 1.87% return on average, followed by domestic taxable fixed income CEFs (+1.03%) and municipal bond CEFs (+0.24%). Fixed income investors became more risk seeking during the month. They pushed High Yield CEFs (Leveraged) (+1.95%) to the top of the domestic taxable fixed income leaderboard for the first month in four, followed by High Yield CEFs (+1.48%) and General Bond CEFs (+1.05%).
For December, the median discount of all CEFs narrowed 37 basis points (bps) to 2.03%—still narrower than the 12-month moving average median discount (3.29%). In this report, we highlight December 2021 CEF performance trends, premiums and discounts, and corporate actions and events.
Highlights
Download our Closed-End Funds FundMarket Insight Report: The Month in Closed-End Funds: December 2021 here.
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