Brett Arends
Some mighty strange goings-on out in Boulder, Colo., where events at Boulder Investments' (BIF Quote - Cramer on BIF - Stock Picks)Growth & Income (BIF) fund are starting to look like a Road Runner cartoon.
You'll remember how Wile E. Coyote could run off the edge of a cliff and just keep on running in mid-air ... until he looked down. That's sort of where investors in Growth & Income found themselves two weeks ago, when the fund suddenly plunged 25%. This is not the kind of result you normally expect from a conservative investment fund whose biggest stake is in Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A Quote - Cramer on BRK.A - Stock Picks). But then, nothing about this fund is quite what it seems. Growth & Income is a closed-end fund whose shares trade throughout the day on the stock market. Through nearly the first four months of this year, those shares soared 60%. Wonderful, yes? Um, sort of. The problem is that the shares left the cliff edge months ago and were simply running in mid-air. While the price went from $9.63 on Jan. 1 to $15.45 late last month, the actual value of the fund's investments rose by just a single penny, from $9.19 a share to $9.20. Turns out, by late April this cartoon coyote fund was running about 60% above the ground. Then investors looked down. Cue the long face ... and the last, pitiful wave goodbye. Beep beep!
RSS
