Today at CEF Investors, we are going to review the Cornerstone Total Return Fund, ticker symbol CRF. Is CRF right for you? We can answer that question in just a few minutes. We are going to look at the funds purpose, ratings, performance, dividends, holdings and NAV. At the end of this article we will sum up what we have learned and give CRF a grade in the top categories.
Disclaimer
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Overview
The Cornerstone Total Return Fund commenced investment operations in 1973. The Fund’s investment objective is, capital appreciation, with current income as a secondary objective. There is no assurance, that the Fund will achieve its investment objectives. In determining which securities to buy for the Fund’s portfolio, the Fund’s investment adviser uses a balanced approach, including “value” and “growth” investing, by seeking out companies at reasonable prices, without regard to sector or industry, which demonstrate favorable long-term growth characteristics.
http://cornerstonetotalreturnfund.com/
Morningstar Ratings
The first thing I like to check when researching a fund, is what do the experts say. Let’s hop over to Morningstar and get their rating. Morningstar assigns star ratings based on their analysts’ estimates of a stock’s fair value. A 5-star stock is a good value at its current price; a 1-star stock isn’t. Star ratings, which are updated daily, can change for three reasons: because analysts alter their estimate of a stock’s fair value, because a stock’s price changes, or both. Ratings that change because analysts alter their estimate of a stock’s fair value, are marked with the asterisk symbol. Morningstar has rated CRF as five stars, so that’s excellent.
The Street Ratings
The Street gives CRF an investment rating of B+, a performance rating of A+, and a risk rating of C. Positive factors that influence this rating include a well above average total return and low expense structure. The fund invests approximately 100% of its assets in stocks and may be considered for investors seeking an Equity Income strategy.
Barchart Ratings
And last, let’s look at Bar Chart. Bar chart Opinions, show traders what a variety of popular trading systems are suggesting, in terms of going long or short the market. The Opinions takes up to 5 years’ worth of historical data, and runs these prices through thirteen different technical indicators. After each calculation, the program assigns a buy, sell, or hold value for each study, depending on where the price lies, in reference to the common interpretation of the study. Bar Chart says that CRF, is a weak Buy. The Barchart Technical Opinion rating is a 24% Buy with a Weakest short term outlook on maintaining the current direction.
Total Return Performance
Now lets check out this funds performance. Total return, takes both capital gains and dividends into account, in order to provide a complete picture, of how a stock performed over a specified time period. This can be extremely useful, for evaluating investment returns among dividend-paying stocks, and for comparing the performance, of dividend-paying stocks to those without any dividends, or other distributions.
According to Seeking Alpha’s website, for the past year, the total return for CRF, has out performed the total return of the S&P 500, by about 10%, which is excellent performance!
Price Performance
Seeking Alpha also shows, that the price of CRF for the last five years, has remained in the ten to twenty dollar range.
Dividends
Continuing on, lets check out the dividends. Dividends are payments a company makes, to share profits with its st
Continuing on, lets check out the dividends. Dividends are payments a company makes, to share profits with its stockholders. They are generally paid on a regular basis, usually monthly or quarterly, and they are one of the ways investors earn a return, from investing in stock.
Again, according to Seeking Alpha, the dividend yield currently is around 13%, which is excellent. Also, this fund just raised it’s dividend for 2022, also an excellent sign. If we look at the historical Yield on Cost, we can see that for the last five years, the yield has generally been between 10 and 20 percent.
All in all, for the last 5 years, this fund has had very stable price and yield.
Sectors
Before we look at the holdings of this fund, let’s find out what sectors are performing well. Comparing the sectors of our fund, to the sectors that are doing well, can give us valuable insight. Over at FinViz, we can see for the last year, that the top five sectors are Energy, Financial, Utilities, Consumer Defensive and Real Estate.
Holdings
Now let’s see what holdings are in our fund. At Seeking Alpha, we can see that the top five sectors are, Technology, Financial, Health Care, Communication and Consumer Cyclical. You can see that this fund, is focused on one, of the top five performing sectors right now. The top 10 holdings are all well known companies such as, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Fidelity, Berkshire Hathaway, JP Morgan, Adams Diversified, Meta, and NVIDIA.
To see the current holdings click here: https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/CRF/holdings
Net Asset Value (NAV)
What review of a closed-end fund would be complete, without a look at the NAV? Over at CEF Connect, we can see that for the last five years, this fund has traded at a premium. So if you are the type of investor, that always wants to buy at discount, then this fund is not going to be for you.
To see the current NAV chart click here: https://www.cefconnect.com/fund/CRF
Disclosure
And as full disclosure, I currently own 100 shares of CRF and will be looking to add more to my portfolio. This fund fits into my investment goals and strategy as a solid performing, good paying dividend fund.
Conclusion
So is CRF a buy for you? Let’s review what we have covered. We have three different sources, all giving CRF, a buy recommendation, so let’s give this fund an A for Ratings. Since CRF is out performing the S and P 500, we need to rate this fund, as an A for performance. Any time a fund can pay steady dividends over 10 percent, you would also need to give it an A for dividends. After reviewing the holdings, and the main investment sectors, CRF should only get a C for Holdings. You can see that CRF definitely has some things going for it. Maybe CRF can meet some of your investment goals and strategy also.
Closing
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