The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Zweig has written an interesting article on the risks of high yields paid by closed-end funds. Closed-end funds trade like stocks and are considered cheap when they trade at a discount to their NAVs. They trade at a premium if the market price is more than their NAV. Closed-end funds can be extremely volatile especially during tough market conditions.

Jason Zweig mentions three funds which recently traded at a high premium and whose high yields may be unsustainable. The three funds noted are:

Damien Hoffman: Joe, what are the MAVINS and why should we care about these countries more than the BRIC countries?

Joe Weisenthal: The MAVINS are Mexico, Australia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Nigeria and South Africa. These are countries with big commodity export opportunities plus an interesting domestic story.

Mexican remittances have reached their lowest level since February 2005, according to the Central Bank of Mexico.

The FT's Money Supply blog reports the news, in a post entitled "As the dollar slides":