It’s not what CELFX is investing in that is the problem I am identifying but how much it’s yielding above Treasuries, i.e., the yield spread, after deducting significant fees without showing any apparent volatility while public markets invested in similar low credit quality debt show significant volatility. Its NAV is behaving as though it invests in high quality low risk credit while it is actually investing in the opposite. You can’t earn 11% today before fees when Treasuries are yielding 4% without taking significant default risk. I don’t think the pricing of the fund reflects that risk. And I am fairly certain it didn’t reflect that risk in March of 2020.

@Lewis
- NICHX and CELFX invest in a wide variety of debt instruments, not just corporate debt. For example litigation financing, structured capital, royalties, etc..
- Both are debt specialists with pedigree and a track record. This is their bread and butter, they're not generalist debt analysts within a 60/40 fund and unlike many debt funds both spread the net quite broad when it comes to portfolio assets.
That's not to say that a Madoff like event cannot happen to either one of above. The main advantage of interval funds is that one is less affected by the daily gyrations of the market and through gating policies managers can prevent a stampede to the exits which open ended mutual funds do not have the capability to do so. At inflection points, herd behavior rules and is what causes perm losses.
Regards your comments on stale pricing, interval funds allow for quarterly redemptions so the NAV needs to be at least close to reality for the fund managers to allow redemptions else if there is a large disconnect, the managers are effectively handing out dollar bills for 80c.
Not following your comparison to Treasuries because that is kinda table stakes for any debt or equity fund that performs above benchmarks, nothing unique in CELFX or NICHX about that. Giroux at PRWCX or BRUFX managers did not build their long term track records and beat their benchmarks by buying plain vanilla Treauries or being closet indexers on equity side.

@StayCalm The smoothness of the returns of NICHX and CELFX during periods of distress makes me less comfortable, not more, about investing in them. Here is how various publicly traded debt markets traded in March of 2020 during the worst of the pandemic decline: https://wstam.com/news/market-updates/march-2020-fixed-income-market-review/
Yet CELFX, which invests in junk rated credits only fell 2%. The public floating rate market fell 8% and the high yield market 11%. They invest in comparable credits from a risk of default perspective. That indicates to me stale pricing in illiquid assets in CELFX. It is arguable that public markets oversold, yet by how much? In a period of true long-term distress instead of a flash followed by a government bailout like March of 2020, defaults rise, liquidity dries up and even private debt as interval fund shareholders gradually redeem will need to reflect market pricing as opposed to some stale assessment of valuation by a fund board or pricing service hired by the board. All of which is to say I do not think those March 2020 numbers reflected reality as to what those assets were worth at that moment.
Meanwhile, CELFX is charging a 2.5% total expense ratio including acquired fund fees and administrative costs while currently yielding 8.9%. With Treasuries yielding 4% without fees subtracted, a fund cannot yield 8.9% today without taking on significant credit and/or leverage risk. Pricing of its assets should reflect those risks when public debt markets slide.

Banks & financials can count preferred as Tier 1 capital only when they are noncumulative; some exceptions may apply. So, there are rarely any bank/financial preferreds that are cumulative.
https://content.next.westlaw.com/practical-law/document/I21061766ef0811e28578f7ccc38dcbee/Tier-1-Capital?transitionType=Default&contextData=(sc.Default)

This is what I have done recently (reported on another thread).
I bought a preferred stock JPM-M, the company is very safe from default for US$ 16.998 per share, coupon is 4.2% with first call date being 9/1/2026.
Income is 6% to me based on my cost so I collect 6% till 9/1/26 (I get US$ .26 every quarter per share). This will not be paid only if JPM doesn't pay the dividend on the regular share (I think the chances are very remote but this is the little risk with any preferred).
If JPM calls the preferred stock after 9/1/26, I will get US$ 25 for each share - potential capital gain.
This is invested in Roth so 6% income and subsequent CG will be tax free.
Do you see any issue with this?
Mark - corrected & thanks for correcting me.
Thanks,

johnN has been a poster at MFO for many years. He seems attracted by offerings that promise above average returns, but upon closer examination also have well above average risks. Not for the faint of heart. Perhaps the gains and losses of these types of things average out over long periods of time- we have no way of knowing.

This fund popped up in my screener and looks interesting on the surface
https://www.destracapital.com/about/updates/destra-capital-launches-international-event-driven-credit-interval-fund
https://www.destracapital.com/strategies/bluebay-destra-international-event-driven-credit-fund
https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/fund-performance?s=y&symbol=CEDIX
Investment Strategy and Philosophy
The Fund invests in credit related instruments and/or investments considered by the Fund to have the potential to provide a high level of total return. Credit related instruments include:
Bonds
Debt securities
Loans issued by various U.S. and non-U.S. public- or private-sector entities
Derivatives
Cash equivalents
Pros: Global mandate, CAGR 12.60%, StdDev 9.43%, interval fund, market co-relation 0.57, Alpha 9.11%, corporate parent is Royal Bank of Canada
Cons: Relatively young, low AUM < $60M, niche strategy
Anybody invested in this one or have thoughts on it?

I have always been a bit suspicious of Rida Morwa's many many posts on Seeking Alpha.
They all seem to promise unlimited income with no or little risk. The articles are well written and seemingly wise and appear to offer great investment opportunities. But why are there so many many recommendations?
The recent article is pushing HT ( Hersha Hospitality Trust) preferreds. HT owns a lot of "high end" hotels nationwide ( Marriot?). The common dropped 75% during Covid and the dividend ($1.12 a year) disappeared until last month when it started paying $.20 a year.
The Preferreds crashed also. HTpD was down 75% and the dividend of $0.406 a quarter was eliminated for all of 2020. As it was cumulative, they did payback dividends in 3/2021 of $1.625 after Pandemic eased.
A quick Google search turns up a fair amount of concern about Rida Morwa's investment service ($550 a year) performance. I cannot find any information the service itself posts about past preformance on the website.
TipRanks says only 52% of his recs have been profitable one year later with an average return of 4.3%.
https://www.tipranks.com/experts/bloggers/rida-morwa
Interesting blog on income investing has worse accusations
https://innovativeincomeinvestor.com/new-discussion-areas/
"HDO is short for High Dividend Opportunities which is a paid service on Seeking Alpha. The head guy is Rida Morwa, but he is assisted by several other authors, often times Pendragon or Preferred Stock Trader.
On this board, III, they might be referred to as HDO, Rida or Pendy.
There are at least four issues that some III’ers have with HDO.
1) They typically pick the highest yielding preferred/baby bond to recommend to investors, because it is enticing. They often times understate the risk. Several of their recommendation have literally gone bankrupt. Others have suffered catastrophic losses but have not gone bankrupt (yet.)
2) They ignore their past history of recommendations. They might recommend an issue when it is selling for say $20. Then it drops to $10 and they write a NEW post recommending it again, WITHOUT mentioning they recommended it earlier. Obviously anybody that bought it on the first recommendation is suffering.
3) When someone posts any critical comments they typically get deleted on short order. We do NOT know if it is a HDO person or a SA person, but “responsible opposing comments” are NOT welcome.
4) There is a suspicion that is NOT provable by us, that they are taking advantage of very illiquid preferreds to reward “insiders”. The mechanism would be something like:
a) Have “insiders” buy positions in XYZ
b) Publish a recommendation to HDO paid subscribers on XYZ, which pushes the price up
c) Release the recommendation to the free SA readers on XYZ which further pushes the price up
d) Creates a potential opportunity for insiders and/or paid subscribers to make a quick profit, mostly based on HDO’s ability to move the price up.
In the last two days, a few of HDO’s picks have done very poorly. Yesterday it was HMLP-A which closed down 21%. Today it was ALIN-A,B, E which all closed down ~ 62%. HDO had written SA posts recommending all four of these. The posts are NOT recent, but at the same time they did NOT post any sell recommendations, so there is an assumption they were still valid HDO recommendations."
For Preferreds CEFS etc look at Forbes/Fridson Income Investing Newsletter ($200 a year). Marty Fridson is quoted in Barron's regularly
https://isinewsletter.com/profile-current-newsletter/
Four portfolios of preferreds, CEFs , lots of ideas and recommendations on individual issues. His portfolios of preferreds etc were down between 12 and 24% in 2020.
For income investing in individual stocks, I have found Simply Safe Dividends very useful
https://www.simplysafedividends.com/
He publishes three portfolios, with monthly return and risk stats, compares them to to SCHD, and SPHD and VIG and trades very little (now unfortunately price is up to $550 a year but there is a two week free trial).
Kiplinger's Investing for Income is much cheaper ($79 a year) and has pretty good ideas ( a little more volatile than SSD so much diversification necessary here) for mutual funds, ETFs, CEFs and stocks.
In my opinion, all three are much better choices than anything I have seen on Seeking Alpha

Well, we have 'Two for Tuesday' (FM radio); and a 'Warm for Wednesday' (Powell/Fed. statement). Warm and fuzzy feeling, for the most part; the Fed. rate increases may back down a tad. Then, 'Freaky Friday', from the jobs and wages reports. Too many new jobs and folks making too much via hourly wage. Damn, can't catch a break, eh? Speaking of breaks, these 'hotter' numbers may give more pause to the Fed and any notion about going easy on the rate increases and for how long. Sorry, companies and you worker bee folks; you're going to have to stop this economic expansion. We'll help you going forward, okay? Bond yields/prices hopped around a bit; with many bond areas giving the 'bird' to the FED, for the week in total. About midday Friday, bond yields dropped and resulting nice price gains came forth to support a direction for the week. As shown in the below list, the longer duration of IG bonds continues to provide the best performance. Those who have bonds in their investment mix now have more support in this area. The recent, apparent bottom in bond pricing from October 25 continues to find support from those levels.
ALGO FED: Perhaps the FED should try operating their mandates via an ALGO program using 20 economic data points of their choice; to discover the results for managing the U.S. economy, in this manner.
Several selected bond fund returns since October 25.
NOTE: I've kept the prior dated reports in the beginning of this thread; and have added YTD to this data.
All listed etf's below have nice price gains for this past week, except the 'bear/short' etf.
For the WEEK/YTD, NAV price changes, November 28- December 2, 2022
--- AGG = +1.5% / -11.2% (I-Shares Core bond etf) widely used bond benchmark, (AAA-BBB holdings)
--- MINT = +.22% / -1.4% (PIMCO Enhanced short maturity, AAA-BBB rated)
--- SHY = +.47% / -3.8% (UST 1-3 yr bills)
--- IEI = +1.2% / -8.4% (UST 3-7 yr notes/bonds)
--- IEF = +1.8% / -12.8% (UST 7-10 yr bonds)
--- TIP = +2.65% / -9.5% (UST Tips, 3-10 yrs duration, some 20+ yr duration)
--- STPZ = +1.2% / -3.5% (UST, short duration TIPs bonds, PIMCO)
--- LTPZ = +6.8% / -25% (UST, long duration TIPs bonds, PIMCO)
--- TLT = +4.3% / -26.2% (I shares 20+ Yr UST Bond
--- EDV = +6% / -33% (UST Vanguard extended duration bonds)
--- ZROZ = +6.5% / -34.5% (UST., AAA, long duration zero coupon bonds, PIMCO
--- TBT = -8.2% / +68.6% (ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury (about 23 holdings)
--- TMF = +12.5% / -65.6% (Direxion Daily 20+ Yr Trsy Bull 3X ETF (about a 3x version of EDV etf)
--- BAGIX = +1.56% / -12% (active managed, plain vanilla, high quality bond fund)
*** Other, for reference:
--- HYG = +1.2% / -9.1% (high yield bonds, proxy ETF)
--- LQD = +1.9% / -15.1% (corp. bonds, various quality)
--- FZDXX = 3.81% yield (7 day), Fidelity Premium MMKT fund
*** FZDXX yield was .11%, April,2022. The rate of rise in the yield is stagnate for this past week, versus the past six months.
Remain curious,
Catch

From the Hoya Capital blog:
Blackstone Redemptions • Mixed Jobs Data • REIT M&A
'Blog' reports are supposedly readable by anyone but just in case here's a snippet.
"Real estate asset manager Blackstone (BX) was in focus today after its massive $70B nontraded REIT platform - BREIT - announced that it has begun limiting withdrawals after a wave of redemption requests that exceeded its monthly and quarterly limits. An issue that we predicted in our State of the REIT Nation Report last month, BREIT reported that its Net Asset Value has increased 9.3% this year through September 30 - claiming roughly 40% outperformance over the public REIT indexes despite paying "top-dollar" to acquire a half-dozen public REITs over the past two years whose closest public REIT peers are trading lower by an average of 30% this year. Naturally, investors have seized on the opportunity to redeem shares at these premium valuations. We've discussed the risks of non-traded REIT ("NTR") space across many reports over the past half-decade and continue to watch the area for signs of stress given their typically-high leverage and sensitivity to investor fund flows - which we expect could eventually become an area that's "ripe for picking" for the more conservatively-managed REITs."

And in current "crypto" news:
Crypto lender BlockFi files for bankruptcy after FTX collapse-
Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing as fall of FTX continues to reverberate across industry
Following are excerpts from a current report in The Guardian:

The crypto lender BlockFi has become the sector’s latest big operator to declare bankruptcy, as the fallout of the collapse of offshore cryptocurrency exchange FTX continues to spread.
BlockFi, which operates in a similar fashion to a conventional bank, paying interest on savings and using customer deposits to fund lending, says it has $256.9m cash in hand. According to court documents, its creditors include FTX itself, to which it owes $275m, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to which it owes $30m.
In a statement announcing its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, BlockFi said: “This action follows the shocking events surrounding FTX and associated corporate entities and the difficult but necessary decision we made as a result to pause most activities on our platform.
“Since the pause, our team has explored every strategic option and alternative available to us, and has remained laser-focused on our primary objective of doing the best we can for our clients.
“These Chapter 11 cases will enable BlockFi to stabilise the business and provide BlockFi with the opportunity to consummate a reorganisation plan that maximises value for all stakeholders, including our valued clients.”
The SEC levied a $100m fine on the company in February for violating securities laws, arguing that the investment products the company offered qualified as unregistered securities. The outstanding $30m debt is apparently the unpaid portion of that fine.
BlockFi has already stumbled close to bankruptcy once already this year, in the wake of spring’s crypto crash.
After chief executive Zac Prince said the company needed an injection of capital to stave off a liquidity crisis, it signed a deal with none other than FTX, which gave the company access to $400m in loans. The price of the deal was an option from FTX to buy the lender for about $240m, a sharp decline from a peak valuation of $3bn.
That option was never exercised, and the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange sparked a bank run at BlockFi, seen by customers as dangerously entangled with Sam Bankman-Fried’s company, that proved terminal. Without the ability to draw on the credit line, nor access its own funds stored on the FTX platform, BlockFi was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

With all due respect to Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin and Tina Smith, IMHO cryptocurrency is no more unsuitable today for employer-sponsored plans than it was a month ago. Their current letter is more or less a followup to a similar but more extensive letter sent by Senators Warren and Smith in May. That in turn came after DOL issued guidance on cryptocurrency in 401(k) plans in March, emphasizing its risks.

Fidelity isn’t the first company to give 401(k) participants access to cryptocurrency assets. Another industry provider, ForUsAll Inc., has linked workers with cryptocurrency exchanges through brokerage windows for several years. Fidelity takes a different approach with its Digital Asset Accounts product, which doesn’t rely on outside exchanges or brokerage windows.

Employee Benefit Plan Review, October 2022, Volume 76, Number 8, pages 16-19. CCH Incorporated.
(Published before FTX's collapse)
The genie has been out of the bottle since brokerage windows were allowed. Fidelity just provided another route to the same investments. That's not to say that plan sponsors have no responsibility for how those windows are used. The DOL guidance hints at that. Quoting again from CCH:

DOL provides a clear and definite warning to plan fiduciaries:

The plan fiduciaries responsible for overseeing such investment options or allowing such investments through brokerage windows should expect to be questioned about how they can square their actions with their duties of prudence and loyalty in light of the risks described above.

While the focus of this guidance is on 401(k) plans, the DOL’s warnings also extend to plans and plan fiduciaries responsible for allowing cryptocurrency investments through self-directed brokerage windows.

One way of addressing this is to set limits. As stated in the OP, Fidelity sets a 20% limit. So the 20% Bitcoin decline in value lamented in the senators' letter would have resulted in a 4% or less decline in a participant's plan value. Significant but not catastrophic. And ForUSAll sets an even tighter limit, just 5%.
Finally, note that while some senators are advocating caution, others welcome wild west investing in retirement accounts.

Update: A Partisan Divide

The Department of Labor's cryptocurrency guidance has provoked contrasting responses on Capital [sic] Hill.

On May 5, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. introduced legislation that would prohibit the DOL from limiting the kinds of products workplace retirement savers can invest in through self-directed brokerage accounts.
A day earlier, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., criticized Fidelity Investments for its decision to launch a new 401(k) cryptocurrency product, in a May 4 letter to Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson.

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pages/dol-guidance-could-crimp-401k-brokerage-windows.aspx (Limit 3 free articles per month)

@YBB, whether it's "fair" to compare FCNTX to PRWCX I'll leave to others but this description is from the T Rowe Price website regarding PRWCX:
"Investment Objective
The fund seeks long-term capital appreciation by investing primarily in common stocks. It may hold fixed-income and other securities to help preserve principal value.
Strategy
The fund invests primarily in the common stocks of established U.S companies we believe to have above-average potential for capital growth. Common stocks typically constitute at least half of total assets. The remaining assets are generally invested in other securities, including convertible securities, corporate and government debt, foreign securities, and futures and options."
Granted one could make the case that it's not an apples to apples comparison BUT the manager of PRWCX does have the ability to go all stock if they believe that's where the possibilities are best, whereas the manager of FCNTX can invest in non-stock choices for similar reasons.
Also I drew my first attention to the 2006-2022 time period. No intention to deceive. I used PV and don't know how to choose a start period mid-year (e.g.June) as you pointed out.

@BenWP
I checked the page in question and I reposted the link from Brown Capital. I cannot post the direct link to the distributions. You need to click the link I included above, then click on the "distributions" link under Key Documents heading. I just retried the link above and opened the related PDF link which worked.
The long-term CG distribution is $11.78 for investor and institutional classes of the small cap fund.

Brown Capital's link, above, did not result in my finding the 2022 estimated distributions. Curiously, several days ago it did work and I learned that BCSIX will make a 17% of NAV distribution. I have sold and will rely on NEAIX (which distributed nada this year) for my SCG. FWIIW, Brown Advisory remains an opaque site when one seeks distribution information.

Bond bottom, Oct. 25 ??? One calendar month, 23 trading days. Just the numbers. Global central bankers remain in group think mode hoping they can fix what, in many cases, could partially fix itself; via the consumer. Let us hope that central bank egos don't stand in the path of a positive economic direction, eventually.
Eight random bond etf's returns for the past month, from the recent bottom (?).
CHART
NOTE: I've kept the prior dated reports in the beginning of this thread; and have added YTD to this data.
All listed etf's below have nice price gains for this past week, except the 'bear/short' etf.
For the WEEK/YTD, NAV price changes, November 21- November 25, 2022
--- AGG = +1.07% / -12.5% (I-Shares Core bond etf) widely used bond benchmark, (AAA-BBB holdings)
--- MINT = +.14% / -1.6% (PIMCO Enhanced short maturity, AAA-BBB rated)
--- SHY = +.15% / -4.3% (UST 1-3 yr bills)
--- IEI = +.46% / -9.5% (UST 3-7 yr notes/bonds)
--- IEF = +1.02% / -14.3% (UST 7-10 yr bonds)
--- TIP = +1.3% / -11.8% (UST Tips, 3-10 yrs duration, some 20+ yr duration)
--- STPZ = +.58% / -4.65% (UST, short duration TIPs bonds, PIMCO)
--- LTPZ = +4.35% / -29.9% (UST, long duration TIPs bonds, PIMCO)
--- TLT = +3.3% / -29.3% (I shares 20+ Yr UST Bond
--- EDV = +4.65% / -36.8% (UST Vanguard extended duration bonds)
--- ZROZ = +5.1% / -38.5% (UST., AAA, long duration zero coupon bonds, PIMCO
--- TBT = -6.2% / +83% (ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury (about 23 holdings)
--- TMF = +9.8% / -69% (Direxion Daily 20+ Yr Trsy Bull 3X ETF (about a 3x version of EDV etf)
--- BAGIX = +1.08% / -13.4% (active managed, plain vanilla, high quality bond fund)
*** Other, for reference:
--- HYG = +1.05% / -10.8% (high yield bonds, proxy ETF)
--- LQD = +1.85% / -16.6% (corp. bonds, various quality)
--- FZDXX = 3.81% yield (7 day), Fidelity Premium MMKT fund
*** FZDXX yield was .11%, April,2022. The rate of rise in the yield is slowing for this past week, versus the past six months.
Remain curious,
Catch

Value Line funds have posted at https://vlfunds.com/gains

Funds from operation (FFO) is a measure of cash flow that is calculated simply by taking net income and "backing out" depreciation and amortization. That intuitively makes sense in terms of cash, since depreciation is a bookkeeping figure, not "real" cash that is flowing out of a business' bank account.
Many types of businesses present a non-GAAP (and non-standardized) EBITDA figure to give a "truer" (read: more favorable) picture of income. This is net income after backing out depreciation, amortization, interest and taxes.
Even though EBITDA is focused on income and FFO is focused on cash flow, they look very similar. That's especially true in real estate where depreciation and amortization can constitute the vast majority of tweaks. So if it helps, think of FFO as income without accounting "tricks".
You can see how massive an impact depreciation and amortization have. For PSTL in the third quarter:
net income =     $1,150K
deprec,amort = $4,616K
FFO =               $5,766K
https://investor.postalrealtytrust.com/Investors/news/news-details/2022/Postal-Realty-Trust-Inc.-Reports-Third-Quarter-2022-Results/default.aspx
M* says that free cash flow over trailing twelve months was 6.88x net income. (That's a bit higher than the 5x for the third quarter.) Take the 94% payout based on cash flow and multiply by 6.88, and you get roughly the 653.57% payout ratio that M* reports. The small difference is likely due to rounding (95% x 6.88 = 653.6).
Given this huge difference between net income and payouts, one might think that the divs can't all be income. And one would be right. Over the past year, about a third of the divs represented return of capital (lowering your cost basis). I'm not going to venture a guess as to how one comes up with that 1/3 figure; I'm just reporting it from the PSTL filings:
https://s29.q4cdn.com/654642337/files/doc_downloads/dividend-tax-information/Dividend-Tax-Treatment-of-2021.pdf
https://s29.q4cdn.com/654642337/files/doc_downloads/dividend-tax-information/Form-8937-2021.pdf (see line 15 for adjustment to cost basis)
https://www.hrblock.com/tax-center/income/investments/nondividend-distributions/

Over the last few weeks I added a sizable position of PKSAX in my retirement account. From my screens it is one of the few equity funds that held up very well in both bear markets of March 2020 and the current one. Long term performance is also quite good. It is only available in my retirement account….closed at Schwab and other fund supermarkets. I also added NXPI, TXN, and V over the last month.

@Sven
I would caution folks about paper filing, if you depend on the refund. We are still waiting for my mother's refund from 2020, which had to filed on paper because she passed in early 2021. I am certain they received it. Not only did we send it certified I recently got correspondence from IRS listing Mom as "dcd". But still no refund
While the IRS may process paper returns from living people more quickly, I have heard it still takes months and months