RiverNorth, whose strategy centers on CEF arbitrage as the key to their competitive advantage, posts the following "Cliff Notes" version of their recent conference call.

The following provides a brief recap of the RiverNorth conference call held on March 19th.
Capital markets and economic volatility/uncertainty has led to unprecedented volatility in the CEF markets
RiverNorth estimates that 90%+ of the CEF market is owned by retail – and they are in full retreat
Co-portfolio manager Steve O’Neill described some of the CEF price action last week as a “9.5 out of 10 on the CEF panic scale”
Discounts hit (and in some cases exceeded) levels last seen during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008
To keep investors appraised of the opportunity set, RiverNorth started posting discount data here: rivernorth.com/cef-discount-info
The opportunity is broad based – nearly all CEF asset classes trading at historically wide discounts

@msf- thanks again. Actually, I had found that page and downloaded the pdf file. After your link reference, I did so a number of times and was getting really frustrated because there was NO reference to NAV.
FINALLY I noticed that the script blocker on this computer's browser (a Firefox-based variant optimized for these old Apple G5's) was indicating that some resource had been blocked. When I overrode that the section with the NAV info appeared as if by magic. I'll certainly keep an eye on that info.
We actually have a couple of mac Mini's which are much faster and able to handle browsing with no problems, but I generally use the old G5 because it can handle the ancient (Apple OS 9) financial SS which I've been using for some 20 years. It has certain macro functionality which can't be replicated in current spreadsheets, and the financial SS uses a fair number of those automated macro computing routines. All I have to do is copy the daily M* portfolio report, paste it into the SS, push a couple of buttons, and it's all done... everything computed and updated, with graphs showing complete results quarter-by-quarter, and a page showing each fund's performance, both since the previous entry session and YTD.
The SS is certainly dated- Apple had this SS when MS was still using DOS. Old, but good. Like my wife. :)

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/30126/000089418920002257/rmbmendonreorganization497.htm
497 1 rmbmendonreorganization497.htm RMB MENDON 497E
RMB Mendon Financial Long/Short Fund
Class A Ticker RMBFX
Class C Ticker RMBCX
Class I Ticker RMBIX
Supplement dated March 26, 2020 to the
Statutory Prospectus and Summary Prospectus dated May 1, 2019
IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING FUND REORGANIZATION
At a special meeting of the Board of Trustees (the “Board”) of RMB Investors Trust (the “Trust”) held on March 25, 2020, RMB Capital Management, LLC (“RMB”) proposed, and the Board approved, the reorganization of the RMB Mendon Financial Long/Short Fund (the “Financial Long/Short Fund”), a series of the Trust, into the RMB Mendon Financial Services Fund (the “Financial Services Fund”), also a series of the Trust (the “Reorganization”) (each, a “Fund” and together, the “Funds”). In making its decision, the Board considered the recommendation of RMB, the Funds’ investment advisor, that the Reorganization has the potential to benefit shareholders of both Funds through increased efficiencies leading to lower Fund operating expenses borne by shareholders.
Pursuant to an Agreement and Plan of Reorganization, the Financial Long/Short Fund will transfer all of its assets and liabilities to the Financial Services Fund and Class A, Class C and Class I shareholders of the Financial Long/Short Fund will receive the same class of shares of the Financial Services Fund that are equal in value to their shares of the Financial Long/Short Fund that they held immediately prior to the closing of the Reorganization (although the number of shares and the net asset value per share may be different). Upon receipt of the Financial Services Fund shares, the shares of the Financial Long/Short Fund will be null and void. Shareholders of the Financial Long/Short Fund will not pay any sales load, commission, or other similar fee in connection with the Financial Services Fund shares received in the Reorganization. Expenses associated with the Reorganization will be borne by the Funds to the extent of a Fund’s estimated operating expense reduction during the first year following completion of the Reorganization.
It is currently anticipated that the Reorganization will be completed as of the close of business on or about June 12, 2020. It is also intended that the Reorganization will qualify as a tax-free reorganization under the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, which means that generally no gain or loss will be recognized for federal income tax purposes by the Financial Long/Short Fund or its shareholders as a direct result of the Reorganization. However, prior to completion of the Reorganization, the Financial Long/Short Fund may make net investment income and capital gains distributions to shareholders. Shareholders of the Financial Long/Short Fund should consult their tax advisors regarding the effect of the Reorganization and income and capital gains distributions on their particular tax situation.
Shareholders of the Financial Long/Short Fund will receive an Information Statement/Prospectus that describes the Reorganization in greater detail, as well as important information about the Financial Services Fund. The Board determined that the Reorganization does not require approval by the Funds’ shareholders.
Please retain this Supplement with the Statutory Prospectus and the
Summary Prospectus.

All I want now is people stop calling RPHYX as a proxy for "cash". And then "interpret" it. It's like any other fund you invest in which holds bonds.
Serves me right for trying to grow a brain and invest in bond funds. I never did it pre-financial crisis. Now I know I should never have. Going forward I never will. Really have to rethink my FPNIX investment as well.
I think someone has said investing in bonds is harder than investing in stocks. No kidding! Perhaps it's also because stocks can be manipulated easily by news or otherwise than bonds. Or maybe I'm wrong there as well. In any case, no more 007s in my life. I'll stick to balanced funds at best. At least I know my tax loss candidates for 2020 since hindsight is now also 20-20. Hah!

@Tarwheel - Right there. Objective. PRFRX not around or at least I cannot find data for 2008 time period. I'm taking a wild guess, but perhaps Vanguard Total Bond Market index came out well during the same interval of time. If I had seen that I would never have bought PRFRX.
Can you offer some other reputed floating rate for comparison that was around during the financial crisis?

Jurrien Timmer is the director of global macro in Fidelity's Global Asset Allocation Division, specializing in global macro strategy and active asset allocation. In this article, he presented a balanced analysis on the future direction of the global market.

Key takeaways
The big questions are when will the growth rate of new COVID-19 cases peak and will the fiscal and monetary policy response be enough?
The significant drop in the stock market has been made significantly worse by the oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, as well as forced deleveraging and a soaring dollar.
Earnings estimates for the next few quarters tumbled last week, and will likely fall further in the coming weeks.
While further US stock market declines are quite possible or even likely, my technical work suggests that the momentum of this decline may diminish in the weeks ahead.

https://fidelity.com/learning-center/trading-investing/markets-sectors/stock-market-drops-2020

There are a lot of different situations that are getting mixed together here.
@MikeM raises the question of employer plan rollovers in kind. Often employer plans require you to liquidate your holdings and transfer cash. If they make an exception, it is usually limited to rollovers within the same financial institution, e.g. a TRP-managed 401(k) to a TRP IRA. So rollovers have their own obstacles independent of whether funds are closed or not.
Then there are transfers of shares held directly with a fund company (not the situation here). Long ago, TRP was willing to do an in-kind Roth conversion for me of a closed fund to a new Roth account. More recently, it told me that it would not do an in-kind conversion of a closed fund to a new Roth.
At the same time that TRP was telling me this, Fidelity was telling me sure, they could do the Roth conversion of TRP shares in-kind. I never tested this and have my doubts about whether TRP would allow them to open the new account.
IMHO, the key question is how strict the fund company is with respect to opening new accounts, regardless of where that new account will be opened. The TRP examples above show how this can go either way, and also that a fund company's flexibility can change over time.
Regarding @little5bee's transfer request: Let us know what happens. Filling out a transfer request form is different from actually getting the shares transferred.
I own legacy shares of a fund that over the years transformed into institutional class shares at Legg Mason. It now has a $1M (or higher?) min, not technically closed. Legg Mason has informed me that it will reject any transfer request from another institution (such as Schwab) unless I meet the $1M min in the receiving account. Yeah, sure. I'm hoping that the new fund distributor, Franklin Templeton, will be more flexible.

Thanks for sharing sma3.
The “recent dislocation is one of the most rapid and severe we’ve seen—and this is all with the backdrop that there are no solvency concerns around the mortgage agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in contrast to the experience during the financial crisis,” Daniel Hyman and Ryan Murphy of Pimco wrote in a Sunday note.
Tom Barrack, chairman and chief executive of Colony Capital (CLNY) ... called for regulators to suspend “mark to market” requirements for real-estate holdings to allow real-estate investors and operators to negotiate terms of new loans and payment schedules as the coronavirus slows (or halts) a lot of economic activity.

I sold my remaining shares of IOFAX today. It was very helpful to listen to everyone's comments, so thanks from me to you.
My rational was, 1 of 3 things could happen going forward:
1- the Treasury announcing it would step in and buy some of these assets might keep the fund afloat.
2- the fund has more sellers than it can return money too, like me, and continues it's bolder slide down hill, to what, zero? .
3- I could sell, lick my wounds and put that money to work into something else, something more reliable over time (though reliable may be a relative term now).
I chose #3.
I do remember Junkster getting out of this fund before he left us. I believe it was because these securities were so thinly traded. I certainly didn't comprehend what he was saying or the risk involved at the time. I figured at worst the fund would drift down, but not fall off a cliff. Financial lesson # 1028 - learned :)

@MikeW- I absolutely wasn't aiming at you or your questions, Mike. I'm just perplexed that the liquidity risk inherent in any financial product containing thinly traded and difficult to price components seems to have been disregarded by seasoned investors of the MFO caliber.
I'm hoping for the best of luck for everyone.

I posted the below last week, but it was likely not viewed by most. Now that we have arrived at QEE (Quantitative Easing Extreme) .....thank you for your indulgence.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I posted this back in 2011; or there about. I need some comic relief again, don't know about you.
Are we all going to receive another quantitative easing? I don't know. What's left to do?
Sadly, Mr. Clarke (without eye glasses) passed in 2017. These two put so many financial events in a comic light, based in truth.
NOTE: you may need to click the play arrow two times

RiverPark just posted David's update, which should download if you click on it, and we had a few minutes to chat at the end of his lunch hour.

1. The fund is performing well. It's down 2.1% YTD. That compares to MINT at -4, Zeo at -10 and ultrashort bonds as a group at -3.8%.
   
2. By its nature, Short Term High Yield is generating investable income for him every day. The "ultra short" part means that he doesn't have to sell portfolio holdings so much as letting them mature and be redeemed, which happens regularly. About 40% of the portfolio, $270 million, will rollover into cash in the next 30 days.
   
3. He's buying. The nature of panics is that they favor folks with dry powder and a willingness to buy. He's picking up things that, under the right circumstances, are offering annualized returns of 7-50%.
   
4. He's willing to talk with you. Both he and Morty Schaja have offered to join us on a conference call if that's something that might be useful and generate enough interest among board members / readers to justify the effort.

Let me know what you think. In particular, let me know what topics you'd want to hear about if a call occurs. As a caveat, there are likely to be some topics where David & Co. would be unable to comment for legal reasons.
By way of disclosure: I own shares of RPHYX and last week bought additional shares - as I did with most of my holdings - but we have no other financial ties with Cohanzick or RiverPark.
For what that's worth,
David

It was my sense the Fed would be deploying new programs this time around. This report discusses some of them (still no direct stock market purchases as far as I can tell)....
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced a series of steps this morning designed to support the flow of credit in the U.S. economy. The actions taken are breath-taking in their scope. Indeed, these steps surpass in breadth and depth the measures that the Fed created in the midst of the financial crisis a decade ago. If the Fed pulled out a monetary policy "bazooka" during that crisis, then the steps it announced this morning are the central bank equivalent of "going nuclear."
.....For starters, the committee announced this morning that it will be creating two facilities to support credit to large employers. The Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility (PMCCF) will support the issuance of investment grade corporate bonds, and the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF) is aimed at provide liquidity in the investment grade corporate bond market. This is the first time, of which we are aware, that the Fed has stepped in to provide direct support to the corporate bond market.
...the Fed created the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (MMLF) last week to support money market funds. The Fed has broadened the MMLF to include variable rate notes that are issued by municipalities. In addition, the Fed will also support municipal financing via its expansion of the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) to include high-quality, tax-exempt commercial paper.
Most incredibly, the committee announced that it will soon be releasing details on the Main Street Business Lending Program that is intended to support lending to small-and-medium sized businesses. This program will support efforts that are underway by the Small Business Administration (SBA) to keep credit flowing to businesses that rely primarily on bank lending for financing.
https://fxstreet.com/analysis/the-fed-goes-nuclear-202003231542

From yahoo.finance:
"Stock futures fell sharply on Monday before posting a stunning reversal, indicating a higher when Wall Street begins trading as world policymakers race to contain the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
Unprecedented levels of volatility and an economy in free-fall prompted the Federal Reserve to announce a broad new, open-ended effort to calm markets, which will include buying unlimited amounts of government and investment grade corporate debt.
“Fed policy is shifting into a higher gear to try to help support the economy which looks like it is in freefall at the moment,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank, wrote in an email. “The central bank is shifting from being not just the lender of last resort, but now it is the buyer of last resort. Don't ask how much they will buy, this is truly QE [quantitative easing] infinity.”
The Fed’s move “will go a long way to reassuring investors the Fed has their backs and will stop the growing credit crisis in its tracks,” Rupkey added. “Yield spreads should narrow and the stock market should rest easier now that the Federal Reserve is giving it all it's got.”"
Please google/whatever the post title to read more

Mark - This article https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/us/politics/kelly-loeffler-richard-burr-insider-trading.html?searchResultPosition=1 refers to Sen. Feinstein's office stating that her investments are in a blind trust. (There's a link.) Not sure about a link from Sen. Loeffler. Both senators are married to wealthy investors.

By Loeffler's own admission, her holdings are not in a blind trust. She is routinely told what she owns (independent of whether it is in a trust).
“I was informed of these purchases and sales on February 16, 2020 — three weeks after they were made.”
She says that she is not involved in the trades made. That's effectively the same you as putting your holdings into a traditional discretionary account. "Not involved in the trades" says only that she is not the one making the trading decisions.
The intelligence community provides the President raw data while not getting involved in policy decisions. Likewise, her statement allows for the possibility that she passed "secret" (non-public) information to her portfolio managers who were the only ones involved in making the "policy" (trade) decisions.
This is also a concern about Feinstein's disclaimer. She too says that she was not involved in the trade decisions.
"Ms. Feinstein’s office said her assets were in a blind trust and she was not involved in her husband’s financial decisions."
IMHO one should assume that all statements are carefully crafted by lawyers and one should pay as much attention to what is not said as to what is stated.

"bets on the curve"
"BETS" ??? As in gambling? You mean that you can lose money with this financial stuff??
I'll be damned. Learn something new every day! :)

Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 - Wikipedia
[Search domain en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_2008] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_2008
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, often called the "bank bailout of 2008," was proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, passed by the 110th United States Congress, and signed into law by President George W. Bush.The act became law as part of Public Law 110-343 on October 3, 2008, in the midst of the financial crisis of 2007-2008.
Your welcome, Derf

Dear Old_Joe, we are not born investors, my profession is very far from it, but life offers us many opportunities to make silly mistakes. That is why I am following you for many years any trying to learn from you and many others.
MikeW, I fully agree that the financial support may give huge unexpected boost to the market. I am still 60% invested, I do not want to be too smart about things that I do not understand well enough. My main concern is that if the outbreak is not mitigated soon, the emotional response will be very strong, and the standard tools like looking at the 200 day moving average may not help us to understand what is going on. Probably we will know part of the answer soon.

When I look at their website, there is a special March update but it is only available to financial professionals & interestingly not for shareholders of their funds.
Most of the above (except for the reference to Covid 19) is the same information they have in their fund "presentation" pdf which seems very reasonable & makes the fund appear quite safe. There are a lot of tables & graphs. However, I don't recall seeing the graph for the scenario where the fund drops straight down off of a cliff.
Back in November 2018 the fund did drop just slightly more than 1% (those were the good old days when 1% seemed large) but that was a one day only event.
From their August SAI:
The following table shows the dollar range of equity securities of the Fund beneficially owned by each portfolio manager as of March 31, 2019.
Name of Portfolio Manager
Dollar Range of Equity Securities in the Income Opportunities Fund
Tom Miner
Over $1,000,000
Garrett Smith
$100,001–$500,000
Brian Loo
$100,001–$500,000
So I assume they themselves are feeling some pain right now.
Fortunately I'm not, as I sold out my position in IOFIX the week before after a very bad feeling about this fund & the bond world in general.

IOFIX was only at a little over 2% of my portfolio when the storm hit, so its not a major hit for me. I feel for those who were more concentrated in it. I am a chicken little when it comes to concentrating my portfolio into any one "specialty" holding even if I have respect for the managers....which I did (and do) with IOFIX.

I saw a pretty interesting chart the other day comparing covid-19 with the Spanish flu in terms of market reaction. Nearly identical to this point. With the Spanish flu the market recovered rapidly and well before the virus subsided. If we follow the same pattern now is the time to buy. We may not follow the 2008 model, which was a financial crisis.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/market-behavior-a-century-ago-suggests-the-worst-could-be-over-for-stocks-if-not-for-the-coronavirus-pandemic-2020-03-19

Thanks for that chart @wxman123 . I, like many, am trying to figure out when to move in a substantial way to reenter the market of stocks. This history lesson from 1917 to 1918 is helpful in that regard. It suggests that at some point living with a pandemic becomes the new normal and gets priced into the market. So far I have been nibbling enough to keep the stock % in my portfolio from dropping significantly, but nothing more. I am currently inclined to wait at least until fall to see if there is a new surge in covid-19 cases then before moving back into stocks in a more substantial way.....assuming the initial surge peaks within the next several weeks. That will also provide time to get a sense for peoples willingness to restrict their interactions over an extended period of time as a vaccine is probably not going to be available any time soon.