Watkinson Capital Advisors LLC is truly an active manager with a proven process focused squarely on the municipal bond market; we have a strategy that works. Our separately managed account (SMA) approach provides transparency and peace of mind for our investors. As a fiduciary adhering to the standards of investing with our client’s best interest in mind, our mandate is to buy bonds at wholesale prices through our dealer network and then sell bonds at retail prices in the municipal bond market. Finding these bonds is labor-intensive because we do not go the easy route by buying bonds on the online trading platforms at retail prices. We use a curated dealer network to gain access to the institutional side of bond management. We know what a bond is worth and what we are willing to pay. With our SMA approach, we are also able to customize portfolios to fit a client specific investment goals and expectations.

Our selling approach is a very important part of our active management. Anybody can buy bonds, structure a ladder and let them mature at par ($1000); we would not be active managers if we did that. We realize the benefit of keeping investors in the sweet spot of the yield curve, and by doing this, our investors reap the benefits of more income. We apply this philosophy to every account we manage. We constantly evaluate the positions and seek to sell the bonds 2-3 years before a call date or maturity, capturing the remaining premium in the bonds before it evaporates. The goal is to sell the bond at a good price/low yield and then use the sale proceeds to reposition those assets in the sweet spot of the yield curve.

There are other avenues for an individual to purchase municipal bonds, other than with Watkinson Capital Advisors. First, one can navigate through more than the 250,000 different municipal authorities in this $3.8 trillion market and purchase municipal bonds through their online brokerage account. Option 2 consists of your financial advisor buying bonds from their firm's inventory or on the retail electronic screens offered at various custodians, offering plain vanilla bonds. Option 3, is investing in fixed income through a mutual fund or ETF.

Mutual funds provided instant diversification and professional management, however, an individual’s performance and tax implications are driven by the behavior of other investors. Having your financial advisor purchase individual bonds for you result in a portfolio of bonds that have gone through multiple profit centers, impacting your yield at the end of the day. Buying individual securities yourself is a way to buy bonds if you are alright with leaving income on the table and go through the stress of figuring out what coupons, maturities, credit quality are best for your portfolio. Your result at the end of the day will be similar to the route of the financial advisor, and that is a plain vanilla portfolio. You have worked hard for your money; you deserve professional institutional bond management on the foundation piece of your portfolio. Do not forget, this is your stay rich money, not your get rich money.