Calamos Strategic Total Return Common Stock (CSQ)

FairStock Score: 59/100 — STEADY

Key Financials

AI Analysis

AI-generated, general educational analysis — not personal investment advice.

I approach this not as an operating company but as a closed-end balanced fund, where the asset base and the manager matter more than a moat. Calamos invests across U.S. equities, preferreds, convertibles, and high-yield corporates. The moat, if any, is thin: the fund depends on portfolio performance, distribution policy, and investor demand, and nothing in these figures proves a durable advantage. The fund’s FairStock P/B is 0.95 at the 2026-10-13 close, so the shares change hands below book value, and the FairStock P/E is 3.11. The dividend yield is 7.90%, which will attract income seekers. FairStock’s Graham Number is $55.70 against a $20.62 close, producing a 62.98% margin of safety—cheap on that old arithmetic. But Graham would ask what the assets are worth and how stable the earnings are. FairStock’s ROE is 34.71%, yet ROCE is only 0.45%, a strange pairing that warns leverage or accounting noise may be doing the work. The Piotroski F-Score is 2/9 and the Altman Z-Score is 1.74, both weak signals on financial health. A D/E of 0.41 is manageable, but the fund’s beta of 1.31 suggests it will swing with markets. The biggest gap is history: revenue and profit growth are N/A, the Lynch category is none because there are only 0 years of filed results—need three—so I cannot judge consistency. A closed-end fund can be a decent value if the discount is real and distributions are covered, but the lack of a track record here keeps me cautious. Price is cheap versus book and Graham, not necessarily versus risk.

In plain English: Calamos Strategic Total Return Common Stock is a closed-end fund that invests in U.S. stocks, preferred shares, convertible securities, and high-yield bonds. The fund looks cheap compared with the value of its assets and pays a high income, but some safety checks are weak and it has almost no filed annual history to judge. Overall, it looks inexpensive on some measures but carries clear risks.

The full AI analysis, bull and bear case and key monitorables are in FairStock Pro.

Data as of 2026-10-13 close · note generated 2026-10-15 · model deepseek-flash

Fundamentals from company filings and market-data providers; prices are end-of-day, not real-time. AI-generated analysis is general and educational — not personal investment advice. Scoring methodology · Score test · Disclaimer