The NAVigator

With holiday shopping bargains on everyone's mind, John Cole Scott, chief investment officer at Closed-End Fund Advisors -- the chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance -- sorts through the big discounts in the closed-end fund world to come up with the best bargains, the most meaningful plays now, based not just on current sale prices but the value and income streams investors can unlock. In his search, he identified two equity and two fixed-income funds that might be a good addition to any investment shopping list.

Michael Grayson, portfolio manager for First Trust Capital Management -- where he oversees their Alternative Opportunities, Private Credit and Real Assets funds -- says that investors should be sacrificing some liquidity for the flexibility to get different assets into their portfolios and to have investments that capture most of the upside in bull-market times while protecting capital during market dislocations. That's how the funds he manages have fared over the last two years and he says that current market conditions are bringing out the best properties in interval funds, making them more attractive for investors now.

Mitchel Penn, managing director of equity research at Oppenheimer & Co., says that business development companies have seen yields rising in line with higher interest rates, a trend he sees continuing while the Federal Reserve continues hiking rates. The higher rates have resulted in more credit risk with more borrowers struggling to make payments; as a result, unrealized losses at BDCs have increased, and while those setbacks remain within expected ranges this year, investors will want to watch the trend to make sure losses don't grow wildly if rates keep rising and/or remain high for several years.

John Cole Scott, chief investment officer at Closed-End Fund Advisors -- chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance -- says that today's rate uncertainty has created attractive entry points for some municipal-bond funds because they are trading at big discounts and, in many cases, have gone through a dividend cut, thereby reducing the potential for another cut moving forward. Scott doesn't minimize the pain the muni funds have experienced this year, but notes that investors who are brave enough to double-down should be rewarded as the rate cycle plays out, although he cautioned against looking at yield as the selling point rather than combining yield with discount and net asset values to determine the best opportunities.

Mark Milner, senior investment strategist at Parametric Portfolio Associates, says that a lot of asset classes of closed-end funds have now reached double-digit discount territory, "which historically has been a good opportunity to buy closed-end funds," noting that current discounts allow investors to add to their portfolios or rebalance into funds creating greater value for their money. Milner does worry that year-end tax-loss harvesting in 2022 will be higher than in years past as a result of the large market drawdown earlier this year -- but is hopeful that the compelling values will convince investors to reinvest the proceeds of those sales back into closed-end funds, which would help to minimize the potential impact all of that money movement.

Gretchen Lam, senior portfolio manager, Octagon Credit Investors -- sub-adviser on the XAI Octagon Floating Rate & Alternative Income Term Trust -- says that while economic conditions are challenging and that a recession will be bad for the credit markets, collateralized loan obligations and other loan products have held up relatively well during the current period of rising rates. They haven't been able to avoid the downdraft, she says, but they have outperformed other forms of credit, maintaining a historical pattern of superiority in tough conditions. Coupled with low default levels -- which she expects to rise a minimal amount despite higher interest rates -- it creates an opportunity for credit investors now.

Duncan Farley, portfolio manager at BlueBay Asset Management and manager of the BlueBay Destra International Event-Driven Credit Fund, says that the current economic and market conditions that are making headlines and rattling investors are actually creating something of a 'perfect storm' of opportunities that should make it easier to profit from alternative credit investments moving forward.

Robert Bush, senior vice president and director of closed-end products at Calamos Investments, says that convertible securities -- a hybrid product built to give investors the best of stock and bond performance -- have not been giving investors their cake and letting them eat it too this year, underperforming both stocks and bonds, but he says that positive returns to the end of the third quarter and the way convertible funds have held up relative to fixed-income funds suggests that convertibles should deliver better on their purpose moving forward. Bush also discusses two of the firm's funds, comparing a long-short strategy to a total-return fund and discussing how they have fared -- and what has happened to their discounts -- this year.

John Cole Scott, chief investment officer at Closed-End Fund Advisors -- the chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance -- discusses and compares floating-rate and senior loan funds with preferred-securities funds, noting that floating-rate funds are a tool for combating high and rising interest rates, while preferred equities are a good weapon for battling a recession. As a result, investors in today's complex market may want to "split the ticket," using both types of funds to bolster their portfolio; he looks at the characteristics of each asset class, and has fund suggestions in each category for investors to consider.

Mark Scalzo, chief investment officer at Validus Growth Investors -- portfolio manager for the newly listed Destra Multi-Alternative Fund -- discusses the outlook for alternative investing, the process his fund went through in changing its status and becoming one of the few new listings on the New York Stock Exchange this year, and how that conversion and some other factors have led to a discount that is much bigger than average or than most closed-end fund investors would expect.