mikecupertino

Four Reasons to Like Nuveen Multi-Strategy Income and Growth Fund

The ROR on this fund since inception taking into account price change and dividends (using the excel function IRR) is -6.5%. I realize that past performance is not a perfect indicator of future performance, but I don't understand why anyone would both buy and recommend others to consider buying a fund with a 5 year history of negative total returns to investors. JQC is a dog.

Also, according to Morningstar, the expense ratio is 1.02% and the turnover rate is 78% which jacks up expenses even more.

10 Closed-End Funds Trading at Large Discounts

Mr Karsan recommends that investors should "always do their homework". He needs to take his own advice.

One of the funds on this list, MGB, is a highly leveraged junk bond fund. This seems to me to qualify as a highly toxic investment. Another fund on the list, GIFD, has, according to Morningstar, a 5 year annualized market return of 2.1%. In other words, an investor would have done much better investing in a money market fund.

10 Closed-End Funds Trading at Large Discounts

I don't think the fact that MSP is trading at a discount is a mystery. Since inception (4/27/05), total return to holders of the fund including dividends has been -4.2% per year. The fund managers have a knack for picking losers and are being appropriately rewarded for that talent.

The Master ETF

What I would like to see is a few ETF's that would let me "buy the market". Such a set of ETF's might include:

o Total US equities (including REIT's, energy, mining, minerals) holding 5-10K different securities
o Total world ex US equities (incl same asset classes as above) holding 10-20K different securities covering all countries with tradeable equities
o Total US fixed income
o Total world ex US fixed income
o Alternative assets (e. g. timber, commodities, private equity)

The only choice one would need to make in constructing a portfolio would be how to weight each of the above asset classes.

I realize there are already ETF's out there that come close, but they don't provide total coverage. For example, VTI doesn't include REIT's and other US asset classes.

If there were such ETF's or funds out there, I'd buy them.

Mikecupertino