Greetings. The majority of my investment allocation for the past two yrs has been in leveraged CEFs and, in particular, in muni funds. It's been a decent run but imo the danger of the rate environment henceforth - both short rates for the leverage costs and long rates for the yield/spread risk - since the summer made me shift out of leveraged CEFs into non-levered funds.
Your post is clearly timely right now as the muni mkt has been caught in a perfect storm of technical and fundamental factors. Global public finance issues (i.e. Ireland, Greece, etc), the Republican wins in the mid-term elections (i.e. tax rate effects, BAB bond effects, etc.), QE2 rejection by bond mkt, muni supply factors (i.e. large Cal and Illinois deals, imminent deals due to question of BABs, etc.), bullish technical support in stocks (buy stocks, sell bonds), yr-end tax trades, etc etc etc have caused extreme bearish volatility since the beginning of Fall. I have been adding to positions in intermediate non-levered muni funds during the current sell-off - however, I believe that technical factors may continue to pressure the market in the near term especially until there is resolution in the BAB program.
So the theme for me in the past 6 months has been to ease out of levered funds and kept in cash - got as high as 50% cash - and in the past few days I have added to intermediate national muni funds and to my position in DVY since I would like to gradually build to my equity allocation from hereon as well.
Finally, if you have an IRA I would suggest taking a look at BAB bonds for that portfolio since you are already interested in munis for your taxable portfolio - there are technical and fundamental risks to those bonds obviously. However, imo, BAB bonds are an incredibly great long-term deal for non-taxable accts given the double-dip from the federal yield subsidy if one is already comfortable with holding munis.
Good luck.
