BYM - January: Closed-End Funds Underperform A Strong Market
The year has started extremely strong for stocks, so that even after the correction at the end of January, the S&P 500 ended up 5.7% YTD by the start of February. Index funds for junk bonds (JNK) and municipal bonds (MUB) did not fare as well, being flat and down 1.2% respectively:
Weakness in high yield assets have hit closed-end funds ((CEFs)) negatively in two ways. The first is that CEFs have seen their NAVs decline on average in January because of a skew towards municipal bonds and corporate bonds in