The foundation of our portfolio management is credit analysis and our focus is on essential service revenue and general obligation bonds. Perception of credit risk in the municipal market often does not match actual credit risk which can create attractive relative value. We also seek to invest in inefficiently priced structures to opportunistically add incremental yield without adding the additional credit risk associated with lower quality securities. All portfolios are customized to each individual client’s income, quality, liquidity and tax needs. Our private client strategy is focused on:

• Investing with a high-quality bias (A-rated or better universe) which aims to protect principal
• Maximizing after-tax total return by limiting gains and harvesting losses when appropriate as well as managing the state tax exemption to optimize tax-adjusted income
• Mitigating interest rate risk by remaining duration neutral to individual client’s investment horizon

The taxable and municipal teams work together in an open office environment to facilitate cross-sector analysis and investment, which may be relevant given the potential for lower tax rates and shifting relative value. Our ability to add value over the benchmark is driven by a bottom-up security selection process which takes advantage of credit, structure, and price inefficiencies inherent to over-the-counter traded fixed income markets.