In this article we cave in to our morbid interest in the Tortoise Energy Independence Fund (NDP) and take a look at this highest-yielding and among the worst-performing funds in the CEF universe. The fund is somewhat unusual in its upstream focus and covered call strategy within the MLP sector.
Our conclusion is that much of the fund's poor performance is due to the fund's upstream focus which has performed even worse than MLPs and the broader midstream sector. However, the fund also appears to generate negative alpha, lack the usually-touted defensive nature