almost nothing about selecting individual stocks or sectors, covered calls or puts or naked whatever or death crosses or any of that. My affinity for index funds is for the same reason that toothless people love applesauce.

You are way ahead of me. I'm just a buy and hold investor of a few index funds and a few active mutual funds.

The only reason I've been broadening out recently is because my fixed income stuff is so awful (Vanguard and Fidelity intermediate term mostly corporate bond open mutual funds with current yields of about 2.2%), that I really feel a strong need to do something. With most of my 45% of fixed income stuff in that stuff, getting an extra percent or two would make an enormous difference.

calguy's post in https://www.democraticunderground.com/11213049#post16 opened my eyes.

But I'm not ready to dive into closed end funds until I understand them better. I'm particularly concerned about how they will perform in a long-term secular interest-rate rising environment -- something we haven't had in more than 40 years.