New Closed-end Equity Fund From Claymore/Raymond James Starts Strong (RYJ)

Surprisingly, one of the best closed-end funds to have owned over the last three days was the newly incepted Claymore/Raymond James SB-1 Equity Fund (RYJ). Since it began trading on Friday, RYJ's market price is up over 10% while the overall stock market has had three down days. This has pushed its premium to over 15% though, which most likely will not be sustainable in the longer term.

However, this fund does have an interesting provision whereby starting 18 months from now, if the fund trades at a 10%+ discount for 75 consecutive trading days, a shareholder meeting will be held to vote on open-ending the fund.

What makes this provision unusual is that a majority of shareholders will have to vote in favor of maintaining the fund's closed-end status, or it will be converted to an open end fund. So essentially a non-vote will be equivalent to a vote in favor of open-ending RYJ.