To All, I've been looking into foreign debt closed end funds and think I have found a few winners. Out of 7 funds I researched, I believe that Dreyfus Strategic Investments (DSI)-9% discount, Templeton Emerging Markets Income (TEI)-12% and Templeton Global Income (GIM)-12% offer the best management and the lowest expense ratios. TEI is much more speculative than DSI or GIM, but that doesn't bother me much at this point. There are also govt. only funds, but I don't like the idea of putting handcuffs on good portfolio managers.
The Templeton Funds, especially, have suffered from devaluation in their share prices far in excess of any move in NAV. For example, GIM's return on NAV for the past ten years has been 8.08% while return on market share price has only been 5.5%. I think that somewhere along the line, the market price will reflect NAV and even outperform it. Yield of the two higher quality funds have been in the 8%+ area while Emerging has been over 13%. Obviously, a weak dollar, which can be expected from the Greenspan printing machine, could really boost these things.
Good Luck,
MB |
