I hope this is an appropriate addition to this thread... (not generally a good start to any message, I realize).
This year looks like it will be a record year for capital gains distributions. After years of thinking about it, I've put together a free website to serve as a one-stop shop for gathering capital gains estimates. My database has 250 firms and already has links to nearly 90 firms' estimates. The information I share is less valuable to the folks that are reviewing this thread, but I do think the site is more accessible and I do provide additonal information. (I'm currently posting links to preliminary information or even 2013 links if that's all that is available.)
The site is CapGainsValet.com. Although the site is free, like MFO, I am asking for financial support. In my case, I'm asking for donations to my favorite charity.
This is the first place I am notifying about the site. I could not think of a better group to reach out to before I try to spread the word. Please let me know your thoughts and recommendations.

A side note for those who care (perhaps too much) about who got caught in the 2003ish mutual fund scandal.
Here's a settlement notice from Columbia that pays shareholders of (among other funds) Acorn International, Acorn Select, and funds coming from Stein Roe, Newport, Wanger, and others whose lineage I don't care to track down.
I do recall that one of the more egregious offenders was Nations Bank (which later got merged into Columbia Funds).
I'm not going to sort out which funds were involved; just point out that the scandal appears to have come into present day Columbia from two distinct lines - Nations Bank and Fleet Boston (which bought Liberty which bought Acorn among others). So there were scoundrels on both sides of the "family".

American Beacon
https://www.americanbeaconfunds.com/downloads/resourcecenter/TaxAndDividend/2014YearEndDividendSchedule.pdf
Delaware (See estimated capital gains link on bottom right rail)
http://www.delawareinvestments.com/individual-investors/products/mutual-funds.aspx

FYI:
Gold's rout may be far from over, with many analysts and traders surveyed by Reuters predicting prices could fall to $1,000 per ounce by the end of the year, the first time at that level since 2009, even after Friday's 3-percent short-covering rally.
A rush of physical buying in the past week - from jewelry in Shanghai to coins in Germany - may prove to be a dead-cat bounce that is too feeble to offset a broader trend of selling by investors betting on further gains in the dollar, U.S. equities and an improving U.S. economy, according to the survey of more than two dozen analysts and traders.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=USL1N0SX27420141109

FYI: Let me show you an investment strategy that has had only four losing years since 1971. Its ugliest drop was in 1981 when it fell just 4.1 percent. In 2008, when stocks dropped about 37 percent, it lost less than 1 percent. This portfolio makes sense. Why? Because, as recorded by Richard H. Thaler, in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, we hate investment losses more than we enjoy investment gains
Regards,
Ted
http://assetbuilder.com/andrew_hallam/the_worlds_best_investment_strategy_that_nobody_seems_to_like
Mental Accounting Matters
RICHARD H. THALER
Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, USA:
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/Richard.Thaler/research/pdf/MentalAccounting.pdf

FYI: Eaton Vance launched a pair of new liquid alts mutual funds on November 3: the Eaton Vance Bond Fund II (EBTIX) and the Eaton Vance Global Macro Capital Opportunities Fund (EICOX). These new funds join seven other liquid alts mutual funds listed at Eaton Vance’s website, including three absolute-return funds and four “other” alternatives
Regards,
Ted
http://dailyalts.com/eaton-vance-adds-two-funds-liquid-alternative-offerings/

FAAFX up 6.6% today.

c

@Charles, I wonder if the FAAFX portfolio holdings or weightings have changed?
I sketched out the math and can't see how it went up 6.58% today.
Should have gone up 2.63% just as a result of Sears alone....and I can see an increase of to a total of roughly 3% for FAAFX, as CHK, LE, and HOFD all had nice gains.
Don't see other winners sufficient to propel the fund to a 6.58%, unless the weighting in SHLD is a lot higher than the stated 8.48%
My guess is that the weighting in SHLD could be much higher than stated.
Any ideas?

Berkowitz was buying Sears over the last couple of weeks and that is probably not reflected - that may have contributed.

FAAFX up 6.6% today.

c

@Charles, I wonder if the FAAFX portfolio holdings or weightings have changed?
I sketched out the math and can't see how it went up 6.58% today.
Should have gone up 2.63% just as a result of Sears alone....and I can see an increase of to a total of roughly 3% for FAAFX, as CHK, LE, and HOFD all had nice gains.
Don't see other winners sufficient to propel the fund to a 6.58%, unless the weighting in SHLD is a lot higher than the stated 8.48%
My guess is that the weighting in SHLD could be much higher than stated.
Any ideas?

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-eke-out-gains-close-at-record-highs-2014-11-07/print
WSJ Slant: http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-stock-futures-pause-ahead-of-jobs-data-1415366103
Market At A Glance: http://markets.wsj.com/us

Your kidding right? My wife could beat these returns! with no help from me and her own picks from 5 min.looking over Funds!
Their Real Record during the best (5 yr) market in the last century:
Harvard’s endowment posted annual average gains of 1.7 percent in the five years ended June 30, 2013, according to data compiled by Charles Skorina & Co. That compares with annual returns of 6.8 percent at Columbia University, 5.4 percent at University of Pennsylvania and 3.3 percent at Yale University.

7/1/2008 to 6/30/2013 was hardly the "best five year market" in the last century. The investment in VTSMX from 7/1/2008 - 6/30/2013 turned $10,000 into $14,254.52, an annual return of 7.3%, well below the average yearly return of 11.5% for the S&P 500 from 1928-2013.
That period did, however, coincide with the worst sustained market downturn in over 70 years. and turned $10,000 into $5381.58 on 3/6/2009. (The same investment in VWELX turned $10,000 into an almost identical $14,169.26, an annual return of 7.1%, and only lost 30.5% on 3/6/09.)
Harvard lost ~27% in the downturn. Yale lost 24.6%. As Scott pointed out, endowments that size do not act like individual's portfolios and shouldn't be judged the same way. At the very least, one has to consider that money is constantly being distributed to fund massive research institutions. That David Swenson somehow returned slightly less than the market over the period, with less volatility than the most recognizable 60/40 portfolio in the world, is remarkable.

"Your kidding right? My wife could beat these returns! with no help from me and her own picks from 5 min.looking over Funds! "
It becomes what is the purpose of these funds. Is it to hit home runs every year and take a lot of risk or is to try and preserve and gradually grow capital over time? There have been instances in the past of these funds taking risky bets and having it become an issue for the institution - see Larry Summers and his bet on interest rate derivatives at Harvard that went wrong.

Your kidding right? My wife could beat these returns! with no help from me and her own picks from 5 min.looking over Funds!
Their Real Record during the best (5 yr) market in the last century:
Harvard’s endowment posted annual average gains of 1.7 percent in the five years ended June 30, 2013, according to data compiled by Charles Skorina & Co. That compares with annual returns of 6.8 percent at Columbia University, 5.4 percent at University of Pennsylvania and 3.3 percent at Yale University.
.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-18/harvard-money-managers-exit-on-subpar-private-equity-bets.html

Sears considering forming REIT to help liquidity:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/sears-considering-forming-reit-to-boost-liquidity-1415362718
Same store sales down again but not quite as bad as expected. Says looking to push towards a smaller, "asset light, member-centric" company. Sees 3Q EBITDA neg $275-325M. Sears will continue operating in the stores in the spin-off. Sears up around 17.5% pre-market.
8:00 EST - Looking at the main behind the curtain at Sears (SHLD) and Belus Capital says, "It's apparent the operations remain in shambles and the need to raise cash to survive 2015 (with an intact share price) is a pressing matter." That as the company's 3Q net loss will be some $600M, versus $497M a year earlier, despite flat same-store sales. "This, in our opinion, reflects Sears' obsession with adhering to a 'membership' model where margin is given away but no annual dues are collected" like the wholesale-club operators. "

Goldman Sachs
https://assetmanagement.gs.com/bin/gsam/servlets/LiteratureViewerServlet?pdflink=/content/dam/gsam/pdfs/us/en/tax-information/2014/EI-51+Cap+Gains_Nov6.pdf&RequestURI=/content/gsam/us/en/advisors/fund-center/literature-and-forms/forms-and-tax-center.html
Eaton-Vance
http://funds.eatonvance.com/tax-information.php
Forward Funds
http://www.forwardinvesting.com/doc/?file=Forward-Funds-2014-Preliminary-Capital-Gain-Distributions.pdf
Gabelli Funds
http://www.gabelli.com/news/2014-estdivnotif.html
Voya
http://investments.voya.com/Investor/Products/Mutual-Funds/Tax-Center/General/2014-Estimated-Capital-Gain-Distributions.htm

From linked article:
"The rub with Sears remains that the retail operations are difficult for the average investor to separate from the valuation of the assets that go far beyond the real estate holdings. Investor after investor proclaims the company worthless due to a lack of profits from the retail operation, but the company has a vast array of assets worth billions upon billions that are hidden."
and,
"Simon Property owns or has an interest in 324 retail properties comprising 241 million square feet. The stock is valued at an incredible $46 billion, further providing reason why Bruce Berkowitz and the Fairholme Fund invested so heavily in Sears. Note that Sears has roughly 250 million square feet of real estate. In addition, Simon Property has over $22 billion in debt while Sears has the real estate assets virtually unencumbered."
finally,
"Lampert never had a sole focus to turn around the stores; instead he hoped to develop an online presence, which now ranks only behind Amazon.com and Wal-Mart, while limiting the capital improvements on stores since the plan was to sublease and redevelop the assets anyway."
Sears Holdings' Incredible Hidden Value
If you read this article, here's Seritage's website:
seritage.com/portfolios.aspx

Baron Funds
http://www.baronfunds.com/mutual-funds/distribution-information/
or
http://baroncapitalmanagement.com/mutual-funds/distribution-information-2014/
Aston Funds
http://astonfunds.com/shareholders/distributions-capital-gains

It looks like this ETF does not invest in stocks but in other ETFs. Maybe a fine line there. From the Fact Sheet;
"The Cambria Global Momentum ETF (the "Fund") seeks to preserve and grow capital from investments in the U.S. and foreign equity, fixed income, commodity and currency markets, independent of market direction. The Fund intends to target investing in the top 33% of a target universe of approximately 50 ETFs based on measures of trailing momentum and trend. The portfolio begins with a universe of assets consisting of domestic and foreign stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities and currencies."
Maybe I'm the one that confused.

permanent capital that CEFs raise is extremely helpful in less liquid situations and is being exploited in fixed income funds investing in high yield, non-agency mortgages, munis, loans, cat bonds, EMD, distressed debt, private placements, etc. these fixed income funds represent majority of the CEF universe and don't practice managed distribution.
managed distribution is almost unique to equity CEFs. honestly, i don't think that anyone who is buying a large cap portfolio of AAPL and such and gets 8% annual distribution doesn't understand that at some point they are getting their capital back. i generally don't understand why you need to access equities via CEFs anyway... so managed distributions is not a concern for majority of the CEF investors.
with respect to CEFL and other gimmicky leveraged packages of the CEFs, i advise against. Most CEFs are levered, you don't want to pile leverage on top of leverage...
to add to the OP discussion, AWF has an open end sibling. Ivy's IVH strategy has a successful long-term history as a OEF. (both did change their management team fairly recently.) private equity firms are piling in with the CEF offerings as well (Apollo's AIF is one example.)
FA

Managed distribution funds attempt to pay the same amount in dividends monthly (or quarterly or whatever). If they are making at least that much money, wonderful. But if not, they're paying that high dividend rate out of principal - you're getting your own money back, not earnings.

msf, you are quite correct. But when this fact is put to many fans of high yield CEF's, they don't seem to care. They just talk about the yield, and turn a blind eye toward the concept of total return.

I also have PHSZX. It has Potential Cap Gains Exposure 46.80%, and this year it will distribute some part of it. Historically it was a small fund, but success attracted investors, it closed and yet more than doubled in size since that time, so it is hard to say how good it will be in the future. Probably good since it has the same experienced manager for 15 years, but I do not want to add to it at this stage.

We've mentioned this one a couple times in previous commentary and on the board:
Morningstar Conference Notes
Meb Faber gets it right in interesting ways
Fund summary:

The Cambria Global Momentum EtF (the "Fund") seeks to preserve and grow capital from investments in the U.S. and foreign equity, fixed income, commodity and currency markets, independent of market direction. The Fund intends to target investing in the top 33% of a target universe of approximately 50 ETFs based on measures of trailing momentum and trend. The portfolio begins with a universe of assets consisting of domestic and foreign stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities and currencies.

Link to fund webpage and fact sheet:
Cambria Global Momentum EtF