Here at Motley Fool HQ, we bid a fond farewell to two giants in their respective fields, and from now on the names Jennings and Brokaw will be forever linked. Adieu to Tom Brokaw, who tonight wraps up nearly 23 seasons on the anchor desk at the "NBC Nightly News," and Ken Jennings, who was finally vanquished yesterday after a 74-episode run as "Jeopardy!" champion. Brokaw was the first American anchor to interview Mikhail Gorbachev and the Dalai Lama (not together). Jennings won $2.5 million by knowing lots of strange things. Interestingly, after missing a tax-related question in Final Jeopardy, Jennings will probably owe about $1.04 million in taxes on his winnings.

In today's Motley Fool Take:

A Dollar for 85 Cents

By

Rick Aristotle Munarriz (TMF Edible)



You have to admire closed-end funds. Unlike traditional mutual funds where purchases and redemptions at the end of the trading day shape the number of fund shares outstanding, closed-end funds trade publicly. You want in? Buy your shares from someone who wants to cash out.

Yet because the stock price fluctuates it will never be a perfect match to the value of its basket of stocks. More importantly, unlike conventional open-end funds some closed-end funds can be bought at significant discounts to their net asset values (NAV).

Back in April, just after the successful launch of Motley Fool Champion Funds, I wrote about Tri-Continental(NYSE: TY) in 85 Cents for a Dollar?. Today I can refer to the company as just 83 cents for a dollar as the stock closed at $17.75 last night while the market value of its stock holdings divided by the number of shares outstanding is $21.26. So, yes, you can buy the fund at a 17% discount. The fund's been around since 1929, and along with its low expense ratio of 0.7% and blue chip portfolio that includes companies such as Citigroup(NYSE: C), Microsoft(Nasdaq: MSFT), and Altria(NYSE: MO), you could certainly do far worse in the market these days.

Yet there is also a flip side to the discounts, and that is closed-end funds that trade at a premium. Whether it's an aggressive income fund, bid up by naïve investors who don't understand that high yield entails high risk, or simply an exotic equity fund that is in demand, I'll never understand why folks pay a premium for a fund -- yet they do.

That's why you should always be blinking amber when you see a new closed-end fund set to go public. Because the fund will have underwriter fees to pay for lending a hand with the IPO the new fund will have less money to invest. That means that it will have a 10% to 15% premium attached to it even at the offering price.

So when Pioneer announced that it was launching a new closed-end income fund that will invest in senior floating rate loans I was skeptical. No, I have no problem with the strategy. We are in an environment in which rates are likely to rise so floating rate loans are attractive. My concern is that investors are going to buy in and either expect a pop from the $20 offer price or not realize that a some of that pocket change will go to pay the underwriters, dropping the fund's initial NAV.

To be sure, I went ahead and pulled up the market price and NAV of the five existing pioneer funds. Four of them traded at discounts, with Pioneer Interest Shares(NYSE: MUO) and Pioneer Tax Advantaged Balanced Trust(NYSE: PBF) fetching double-digit discounts to their NAVs. That's not a knock on the funds or Pioneer. Actually, if I were an income investor I may find those discounts tempting. However, that's also why one should avoid new closed-end offerings.

Give them some time to settle and sink to realistic valuations if you want. With so many closed-end funds trading at a discount and no-load funds trading at market value, you deserve better than paying for more than you are getting.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz does not own shares in any company mentioned in this story. He is a member of the Rule Breakers analytical team, seeking out tomorrow's great growth stocks today.

Discussion Board of the Day: McDonald's

Do you think burger chains should stick to their knitting and not diversify into other concepts? Have the burger wars subsided? All this and more -- in the McDonald's discussion board. Only on Fool.com.

Disney's Movie Treasure

By

Steven Mallas

I recently wrote a commentary on one of Disney's(NYSE: DIS) latest movie releases, Ladder 49. Although that film has a relatively decent (and I do mean relative here, considering Disney's previous movie problems) cumulative gross to date of over $73 million, it didn't live up to my hopeful expectations. I thought it might have had a sliver of a chance of maybe reaching the century mark if a few four-leaf clovers were floating around the towers of the Magic Castle, but it wasn't to be. So goes the movie business. Time Warner(NYSE: TWX), Viacom(NYSE: VIA), and General Electric's(NYSE: GE) NBC Universal know all too well the fickle nature of the movie-going public.

National Treasure, on the other hand, is performing nicely. When I first heard about this historical mystery, back in the days when it was in the early stages of development, I didn't think much of the concept -- in fact, I felt it was going to be a snoozefest. Apparently, I missed the whole action angle that Jerry Bruckheimer intended on infusing into the project.

When I saw the trailer back in the summer, I was struck by how clever the film actually is, from a marketing standpoint. You take what could have been a dusty old code-breaking exercise, marry it with Indiana Jones, make sure that the ads feel like the visual equivalent of a mini roller-coaster ride, and voila -- people fill the theaters. Made this Mouse shareholder smile, I can tell you.

Although Pixar's(Nasdaq: PIXR)The Incredibles is doing well for itself, it was pretty much a given that it wasn't going to bomb (that's not to say that Jobs et al. should be complacent about the prospects of their properties, of course). I was more concerned about NationalTreasure and how the market was going to treat it, since Disney needs to rely on its own studio-branded reels of celluloid to drive long-term shareholder value (not that I'm complaining about the Pixar contribution, mind you). As of Monday, the film was closing in on $90 million after 11 days in theaters. It certainly wasn't a low-budget project, but I'd be willing to fathom that come next earnings report, it will be cited as a driver for the company's studio segment if it can go as far north of the triple-digit mark as it can.

National Treasure makes up for Mr. Bruckheimer's stumble back in the summer. There's a lesson to be learned here: Expensive talent/producers will not always guarantee growth in the movie business; it's just so hit-and-miss. That's why media conglomerates must continue to think of shareholder value when green-lighting star-driven vehicles.

Recent Takes on Disney and its competitors:

Fool contributor Steven Mallas owns shares of Disney and General Electric.

Quote of Note

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." -- Isaac Newton

Chico's Glows

By

Phil Wohl

Think back to how you felt about an hour after eating all of that food on Thanksgiving. To be honest, I didn't feel all that energetic the next morning either. Fighting crowds of "Black Friday" bargain hunters at 5:00 a.m. was not my idea of a good time, and it will never be a day I will mark on my calendar.

That being said, it appears that most retailers should expect shiny presents in its sales stockings this Christmas instead of a lump of coal or Charlie Brown's infamous rock. With women's clothing retailers such as Chico's(NYSE: CHS), Ann Taylor(NYSE: ANN), Talbot's(NYSE: TLB), and Limited Brands(NYSE: LTD) all producing strong October sales figures, the bar has been raised for November and December expectations.

The most consistent performer of the women's clothiers is Chico's, which continues to amaze investors with its robust growth. The company's third-quarter earnings of $0.41 per share was 38.6% better than last year's earnings of $0.30 per share and $0.03 better than the analysts' consensus estimate of $0.38 per share. Chico's not only produced strong sales and earnings but also generated a 60 basis point improvement in its operating margin and continued to generate strong cash flow.

Sales at Chico's zoomed up 28.1% in the quarter, and same-store sales grew 6.1%. In addition to operating 450 Chico's-branded stores, the company has also seen success in its 154 White House/Black Market stores. These locations generated a strong transaction increase, and both brands produced improved merchandising margins. The company also completed the launch of its intimate apparel concept test stores, called "Soma by Chico's."

In the category of "the rich get richer," the company's management said that "Even though our accomplishments to date have been significant, we believe that our best and biggest opportunities may lie ahead." You have to love it when a company shrugs off a blowout quarter and looks enthusiastically toward the future.

The shares have appreciated 35% over the past year and are up more than 10% in early trading today. With projected earnings growth in excess of 35% this year, the shares still appear relatively attractive at 26 times the expected 2004 earnings of $1.54 per share.

Few retailers have been as consistent as Chico's in terms of continuous sales growth and earnings improvement. If the best is yet to come, then investors definitely have a great deal to look forward to.

You don't have to get dressed up to view these other takes:

Fool contributor Phil Wohl spent more than 12 years on Wall Street and does not own shares in any of the company's mentioned above.

Investing in Dogs

By

Seth Jayson (TMF Bent)

Fool readers are lucky. It's easy to avoid my babbling about Google's(Nasdaq: GOOG) valuation, the craziness at Taser(Nasdaq: TASR), or the legal woes at Microsoft(Nasdaq: MSFT) and Wal-Mart(NYSE: WMT) when you're on the end of a mouse.

You can't ignore me when you sit at the next desk. As my colleagues will attest, if I'm not spewing about the awesome video game I picked up at Best Buy(NYSE: BBY) or Electronics Boutique(Nasdaq: ELBO), or bragging about the mayhem potential of my latest power tool from Home Depot(NYSE: HD), I'm probably talking about dogs. A recent tale went something like this:

I saw this dog on the subway the other day, and it could do the most amazing trick. It could remain absolutely still, relaxing on the floor, while busy straphangers stepped past, over, and sometime onto it. I'm a fair hand at dog training myself, but if my golden retriever were on a full commuter train, all riders within a 30-foot radius would emerge from the car with pawprints on their shirts, nose prints where the sun don't shine, and the belief that canines' IQs must rank somewhere between mushroom and tap water.

That's why this particular dog's behavior was so impressive. When the proper stop arrived, the retriever calmly stood up and led its wheelchair-bound mistress off the train. This is all in a day's work for a dog from Foolanthropy 2004 partner Canine Companions for Independence (CCI). These incredible pups change the lives of thousands of people. Some provide service, such as turning on lights and retrieving items for disabled partners who cannot do this themselves. Some work with the hearing impaired, and some provide therapeutic benefits in health-care and education environments.

Believe me, it takes a will of steel to keep your eyes from leaking when you see a Labrador retriever help someone confined to a wheelchair become free and confident, or when a smooch from a golden brings a smile and cry to the face of a bed-ridden patient who hasn't said a word in days.

For its efforts to help others -- and help others help themselves -- CCI is one of our 2004 Foolanthropy picks. I urge you to consider helping them with their incredible work. If you prefer, put some of your good fortune toward a home, a book, or even a water buffalo. Or help Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan improve life for the locals, one small project at a time. Your investment in dogs, infrastructure, or livestock may not offer a yield that you can figure in a spreadsheet, but it will pay big dividends inside. And we all need some of that.

For related Foolishness:

Seth Jayson loves dogs, so long as they're not in his portfolio. At the time of publication, he had positions in no company mentioned. View his stock holdings and Fool profile here. Fool rules are here.

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