Housekeeping – Reader Notes

Some recent notes from readers.

Mike asks how he can find credit ratings for the Triangle Capital 6.375% Senior Notes (ticker:TCCB).  There is no rating for this baby bond.  A majority of the baby bonds are unrated so you simply have to do a bit of an analysis on Triangle Capital (TCC) to determine the risk.  On Seeking Alpha we would check BDC BUZZ for his updates.  He is the best.  NOTE–anyone can sign up at Moodys, Standard and Poors and Fitch for ano cost account that allows you to look up any credit rating that they have for a particular company/state/city/school.

Lonny asks if we can add a column for NAV for closed end funds.  We have tried this before and a couple days ago tried it one more time and neither Yahoo or Google have this data that we can import into a spreadsheet.  Given that our website is mostly a hobby we are not able to pay to import this data.  Sorry, we would like to be able to do this.

Chris asks about floating rate preferreds.  We think they are just as safe as any other issue from a given issuer, BUT we do not believe they will be of any benefit for a number of years as almost all the floating rates are based on 3 month libor plus a fixed amount. Given that 3 month libor has been running around .25% it would take a interest rise of almost historic proportions to earn you more than a fixed rate issue.

BDC BUZZ asked if we would link to his site–and we have done so on our Business Development Company page.  BUZZ is the best on Seeking Alpha for BDC info, although he has cut back his writing lately.