Chamois16

Index ETFs Have the Edge Over Actively Managed CEFs

Not a very persuasive argument. CEF pay out higher distributions, particularly country funds, and its not clear that that the comparisons are based on total returns. Finally comparisons can be made either on NAV basis or market price basis. You can't compare a CEF market price with an Index ETF NAV.

One of the advantages of CEF is the ability to exploit periodic excursions from equilibrium discounts common to each fund. That doesn't ccur with ETF subject to creation unit arbitrage, usually penalizing the ETF holder in favor of the arb. There are times in a market cycle in which index ETF outperform CEF and vice versa.

The article seems to be comparing an investment vehicle which is at best nascent (how many truly actively managed ETF are out there). with CEF which have been around for a long time and are particularly suited to sspecific asset classes.

You would do better to limit your comparison to index ETF vs actively managed ETF when sufficient data becomes available, and not try to deal with the vaery different attributes of CEF