Top Funds Jump 20% in One Month

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Gabelli Utility Trust(GUT) soared 21% in November, the best performance of any closed-end fund.

While 63% of the utility fund's assets are invested in electric utilities like Hawaiian Electric Industries(HE), up 13% for the month, two of the fund's top-performing holdings were delivery platforms for media. Satellite TV competitors DISH Network(DISH) and DirecTV(DTV) rose 31% and 20%, respectively, even as competition in that industry heats up.

Investors' confidence rose in those satellite companies amid the impending juggernaut of a merged Comcast(CMCSA) and NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric(GE).

Satellite TV providers may win the head-to-head competition against cable by pushing ahead with more high-definition channels. On Dec. 29, DirecTV is launching a Boeing(BA) satellite that will push its HD channel count to 200 by mid-2010.

In addition, maybe the Comcast deal will be scuttled on antitrust grounds. Comcast has a history of throwing its weight around and is still refusing to provide the Comcast-owned Versus channel to DirecTV at a price DirecTV is willing to pay.

Finally, mergers that reshape the competitive landscape of industries can set off a wave of additional mergers that could result in DirecTV and DISH looking for pairings with other media-content players. Walt Disney(DIS), owner of ABC, and Time Warner(TWX), soon to be free of both its cable unit and AOL, would make an intriguing combination to balance Comcast's negotiating power.

The second-best-performing closed-end fund in November, Enhanced S&P 500 Covered Call Fund(BEO) of IQ Investment Advisors, added 20% for the month. The fund's strategy is to hold Exxon Mobil(XOM), AT&T(T), IBM(IBM), Wal-Mart(WMT) and all the other members of the S&P 500 Index in the same proportions as the index and then to write one-month call options against that portfolio to generate income. The fund also makes leveraged bets using swap contracts on the CBOE S&P 500 BuyWrite BXM Index that tracks the results of a hypothetical covered call strategy on the S&P 500 Index.