Should You Invest In Closed-End Funds?

Hi everyone, thank you for coming back to my blog. I hope you found my last blog interesting and useful, where I covered ‘Why Mid-Cap Stocks Should Be Part Of Your Investment Portfolio.’In this blog, I’m going to cover closed-end funds and how they differ from open-end funds, as well as if you should invest in them or not.You’re most likely familiar with mutual funds, and when investors refer to “mutual funds,” they’re commonly referring to an open-end fund.While closed-end funds have many similarities, there are some significant differences too. Understanding closed-end funds will help you to make a more informed decision regarding whether they may be beneficial investment vehicles for you.Since it’s always easier to start with something one already knows, here are the principal differences between open-end and closed-end funds.Open-end funds are continuously gaining and losing investors; when they lose an investor, they lose the capital that investor had invested with them. Likewise, when a new investor comes aboard, they gain capital.Closed-end funds essentially have whatever capital was invested with them when the fund first began operations. They do have some options to increase their capital, but it is normally not through the process of issuing more shares. This will be explained below.Like stock, closed-end funds are originally available from the company itself in an initial public offering (IPO). After that, the fund shares are generally only available on the secondary market. So, like a stock, you would have to purchase or sell your shares to another investor.Also, open-end fund shares are typically only available at the end of the day at the closing price. Closed-end funds are available all day long.Open-ended funds are priced based on the net asset value (NAV) of the fund. This is simply the total value of the fund’s holdings and cash on…