GDL Fund The Common Shares of Beneficial Interest (GDL)

FairStock Score: 38/100 — MIXED

Key Financials

AI Analysis

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

I look at GDL first as a closed-end fund, not an operating company. It is managed by Gabelli Funds and hunts special situations—mergers, tenders, buyouts, spin-offs, liquidations. That can be a decent hunting ground, but the edge depends on the manager's deal selection and risk control, and the data here do not let me verify a durable moat. The FairStock P/E is 12.48 at the 2026-10-13 close of $8.36. The dividend yield is 5.74%, which is attractive if it is covered, but I have no filed period revenue, net income or growth figures to test coverage. The Graham Number calculation is $12.62, implying a 33.76% margin of safety, and that is the loudest bullish number. Yet the quality checks are poor: Piotroski F-Score 1/9 and FairStock Score 38/100. Altman Z-Score 2.72 sits in the gray zone. The 52-week range of $8.01 to $8.67 is narrow, so the market is not pricing much upside or downside. Because the Lynch category is none—only zero years of filed results versus the three needed—I lack the multi-year record I would want. Without NAV or P/B, I cannot judge whether the shares trade at a discount or premium. So this looks like a statistically cheap, income-oriented special-situations fund with weak financial-strength signals and insufficient history. I would need more filed results and NAV data before calling it a true value opportunity.

In plain English: GDL is a closed-end fund that invests in companies going through mergers, takeovers and other big corporate changes. It pays a high dividend and its price looks modest compared with its earnings, but the overall quality and safety signals are weak and there is very little filed history to judge. At $8.36, it trades below one conservative estimate of value, but the mixed numbers make it hard to call it clearly cheap.

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