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

There are lots of gotchas with closed end funds. For example, the "spread" may be due to the fund being a managed payout fund that is eating away at your principal.

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.
ETY is an example of this. According to its latest semi-annual report, "the Fund makes monthly cash distributions to common shareholders, stated in terms of a fixed amount per common share. The Fund currently distributes monthly cash distributions equal to $0.0843 per share."
That's regardless of whether the fund is even making money at all. M* reports that YTD, out of $0.843/share in total dividends (i.e. 10 months worth), $0.5281/share was your own money back (returned capital), not earnings. That comes out to be around 5% per year of dividend not being income. The true "spread" is thus closer to 3% than to 8%.
M* writes of this fund: "This fund, among others in the series, has used destructive return of capital extensively in the past to meet its distribution targets. ... data for calendar-year 2013 thus far indicates the fund may again use destructive return of capital to a limited degree. That's one reason the fund earns a Morningstar Analyst Rating of Neutral."
Leverage is another factor in a lot of closed end funds. Not this one, and I'll leave that for another post, or for others to comment on.
Make sure you understand how CEFs work - how they're traded, what affects their price, how their dividends work, how they raise money if leveraged, etc.

I should have mentioned it would be in an IRA. No K-1 that I'm aware of.

CTF is trading at a nearly 20% discount to NAV.
Some have suggested it should be restructured:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2569765-nuveen-long-short-commodity-total-return-fund-should-be-restructured
However, that's a commodity futures CEF that's trading at a nearly 20% discount to NAV. There is the potential for capital appreciation is commodities bounce back and, if something happens (restructuring, etc) narrowing of the discount, although there is certainly no guarantee on a restructuring happening.

Hi Charles and others,
It was in my thinking that the recent October pull back was a set up for the fall stock market rally by big money. By doing some selling big money forced some margin calls on other investors which in turn forced prices even lower as some failed to meet their calls and pony up more collateral … and, with this, they were sold out of their positions. I felt third quarter earnings would be strong and thus far they have been and stocks would run. Thus far, they have. In addition, some fearful investors sold and those investors with a stronger mind set bought.
Old_Skeet got on the coaster and averaged in with five buys which averaged about 1905 when all was done. Currently, I am a happy camper with a gain of about six percent on this spiff as of the 31st. Should the S&P 500 Index reach a target of 2100 by year end then this spiff will have returned a little better than ten percent.
Within my portfolio's asset allocation I reduced cash by about five percent and raised my allocation to equities by about five percent. I figure a good number of mutual fund's capital gain distributions will be heavy this year and with this I will automatically rebalance as these distributions are paid as I take all fund distributions in cash.
Some may say, I got lucky … Perhaps so, perhaps not. Thus far, it was the correct read.
Should equities continue thier upward price march into and through the first quarter of 2015 then I may sell some more off into this strength. I'd like to be five to ten percent light from my neutral allocation to equities come summer. After all, we have a blue moon coming on July 31st.
Old_Skeet

ANALysis. Took some losses in HSGFX, gains in AKREX to offset them.

Have you completely bailed out of Hussman? Or just sold part of your position?

ANALysis. Took some losses in HSGFX, gains in AKREX to offset them. Did likewise with some other funds. However, yes I will pay some taxes.
Now I stated my reason for selling. I bought it 2 months after inception. The manager is old. The last time he was in situation he would stop managing he "regretted" teaching his analysts to run the fund. Now he HAS to teach his co-managers to run the fund. I'm not so certain about manager succession plans at AKREX.
I do very aggressive tax management every year. I don't look back at funds I sell. I keep a revolving bucket, buying and selling funds over and over. Keeps me on my toes and making costly mistakes.
I sold WGRNX and BULLX too. See the "what are you buying and selling open thread".

Baird Funds
http://content.rwbaird.com/BairdFunds/PDF/Estimated-Capital-Gains-10-31-14.pdf
Harbor Funds
http://www.harborfunds.com/downloads/2014_Dividend_Estimates.pdf

FYI: As highlighted in our prior post, the average stock that has reported this earnings season has averaged a big gain of 0.99% on its report day. Below is a look at the average one-day performance on earnings this season broken up by sector. As shown, the average Health Care stock that has reported has gained a whopping 2.14% on its report day this season. No wonder the sector has gone parabolic recently! Telecom, Consumer Discretionary and Technology are the three other sectors that are seeing out-sized gains on their report days.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.bespokeinvest.com/thinkbig/2014/10/31/health-care-surging-on-earnings-energy-not-so-much.html?printerFriendly=true

@Kaspa Wisdom Tree kicked a dvd? well, knock me ov-ah! Nice poke in the ribs, by the way (must be Fri.)
@scott Yep, timing is important for asset mgr. investments. Perhaps this one's time has come. And if one of their funds catches your fancy, it is somewhat sweet symmetry to have the company's stock gains help feed the fund (and/or vice versa).

True. But, most HY, active managed funds remain flat/neutral at this time for pricing.
If the pricing remains the same going forward for a sustained period, an investor may still find a yield range of 5-6%. The capital appreciation may not be in place as during the past several years.
Today (with the crazy upward moves in global equity markets) may provide some more clues for the HY sector. Although one should consider that if the flows to equities remains strong, some of these monies may not travel the HY road right now.
Take care,
Catch