This valuation brief will update the Highland Global study, “Family Limited Partnerships: Discount Statistics of Closed-end Funds,” (originally published in November 2005) for data relating to the first quarter. Please see the original article for more details regarding discount statistics of closed-end funds.
Barron’s Closed-End Fund Data
Each quarter, Barron’s Online (www.barrons.com) reports statistics on publicly-traded closed-end funds. The statistics reported include the discount (or premium) of the market price from the fund’s net asset value (NAV), the 52-week average discount or premium, the fund’s objective, and various return measurements, etc. For the first quarter ending March 31, 2006, Barron’s reported that approximately 467 closed-end funds traded at discounts to their NAV for the quarter. For the third and fourth quarters of 2005, there were approximately 450 and 479 closed-end funds, respectively, trading at discounts to their NAV. For the first quarter, the average discount to NAV was 7.4% with a median of 6.9% and a standard deviation of 4.6%. These figures are slightly lower than the figures for the fourth quarter when the average discount to NAV was 9.2% with a median of 9.8% and a standard deviation of 4.3%. In the third quarter, the average discount was 7.7% with a median discount of 7.5% and standard deviation of 4.6%.
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