The Month in Closed-End Funds, September 2019:

The following highlights are drawn from a report by the Head of Research Services for Lipper, and cover activity from September 2019:

• For the third month in four, equity closed-end funds (CEFs) on average posted plus-side returns, gaining 1.47% on a net-asset-value (NAV) basis for September, while for the first month in nine, fixed income CEFs suffered negative returns (-0.18%).
  
• Only 20% of all CEFs traded at a premium to their NAV, with 23% of equity CEFs and 18% of fixed income CEFs trading in premium territory. The world income CEFs macro-classification witnessed the largest narrowing of discounts for the month among Lipper's CEF macro-groups—181 basis points (bps) to 5.26%.
• Natural Resources CEFs (+2.78%) posted the strongest positive returns of all equity CEF classifications for the month.
• The Global Income CEFs classification (+0.97%) posted the strongest plus-side returns in the fixed income universe for the month.
• For the first month in 11, the municipal debt CEFs macro-group posted a negative return on average (-0.96%), with all classifications in the group witnessing returns in the red for September.