RE:The limited upside potential of the PrefsObscure....thanks for your response..
I assume you are talking about the ENB prefs.
One thing you are forgettting when you say that they are trading at the top of their range for the last five years is that many of them and in particular the ones that I have bought don't have a fixed coupon. The coupon is reset every five years based on a guaranteed premium to the current GOC bond rate. For example, my largest holding had the dividend reset for the next five years last September at pretty much the peak in interest rates.
This reset changes the math in terms of where the SP will go as interest rates fall and so in that regard looking at a chart for the last five years is somewhat irelevant since those SPs were based on a lower dividend. This was a major consideration of mine when I decided to buy them. I took advantage of this and bought them after the reset and before many people had figured out what was going on and bought them with a 9% yield. Right now in addition to the handsome yield, the SP is over 12%. If interest rates fall as expected over the next year or so, the SP will rise further. In addition, based on my conerns about the overall economy and asset valuations, they present less risk since they are more strongly correlated to interest rates than market valuations.
Frankly, my guess is that they will outperform the ENB commons over the next year or so and at that time a shift to either ENB or ENS would make a lot of sense.