Preface: Every six months it’s time to review the previous 12 months of Joe Eqcome’s closed end fund (CEF) research to determine what’s working, what’s not, and why?

Research Reviewed: Since October of 2008, there have been 16 articles written by Joe that had associated investment recommendations. (Most, if not all, have been posted on Seeking Alpha.) Thirteen articles focused on equity-oriented CEFs and three focused on debt-oriented CEFs.

Summary: Lower share price closed-end funds (CEF) have a significant price appreciation advantage relative to higher share price CEFs in a stock market recovery. Current beneficiaries may include: BLU, CIK, ASG, ZF, USA and ZTR (see table).

The chart below illustrates the top and bottom share price quartiles of a sample of 121 CEFs based on share price appreciation 3, 6 and 9 months from the October 2002 stock market trough. The average price appreciation difference between the lowest and highest share price CEF quartiles for the 3 periods was 9.9%. (The comparable difference between small cap stocks, as measured by the ETF IWM and large cap stocks, as measured by SPY, was 6.7 %.)

Many investors think that the perfect stock is one that sells for a low price and pays a high yield. It may be hard to believe but there are actually several stocks, including closed-end funds or CEF's, that sell for less than $5 a share and pay a dividend, with five of the stocks with yields in excess of 6%.

All of the following stocks pay quarterly unless otherwise specified. Also, all of the following have market caps above $265 million. Just remember that the yields are based on historical payments, and the dividends can be adjusted or terminated at any time.