Term funds have grown in number within the CEF market in the last few years. The majority of term funds sit in the fixed-income sector, currently numbering around 15% of the population. Term funds are attractive for two basic reasons: 1) they are useful for relatively short-lived opportunities in the market, such as the depressed valuations of RMBS coming out of the financial crisis and 2) they are good at controlling discount volatility.
In this article we review the types of term funds and introduce a metric for quantifying potential upside from discount compression in