mavericks

June ETF Short Interest Surges

According to ETFconnect.com, there are 476,300,000 shares of the SPY. If there are 197,400,000 shares short then that represents 41.4% of the outstanding shares. That is a huge percentage though the question is how that compares historically.

David Fry's Market Outlook for Friday

I don't know if you have noticed but the CEF market is collapsing. All the CEF's I follow, equity and bond are at bear market discounts and yet many are at 52-week high NAV's, particularily on the equity side. Any idea what's going on?

Barron's Mid-2007 Analyst Roundtable

PFN is leveraged about 38%. I've owned 2k shares for a long time and was thinking about shedding some shares but its sister fund PFL trades at an even higher premium, lower yield. Risks are if the Fed cut rates since their portfolios are all securities tied to LIBOR + a percentage. The securities are typically in a Senior position but are usually not very liquid compared to corporate bonds. But unlike corporate bonds, when interest rates go up, so does their income which more than offsets their borrowing costs.