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 third 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, NAV, and various return measurements, etc. For the fourth quarter ending December 31, 2005, Barron’s reported that approximately 579 closed-end funds traded at discounts to their NAV for the quarter. For the third quarter, there were approximately 450 closed-end funds trading at discounts to their NAV. For the fourth quarter, the average discount for the quarter was 9.2% with a median discount of 9.8% and a standard deviation of 4.3%. These figures are higher than the average discount of 7.7% in the third quarter and the median discount of 7.5% and standard deviation of 4.6%.