The municipal bond market remains the last bastion of tax-exempt income for the American Citizen looking for peace of mind and predictable income.

First, the shape of the yield curve will tell us where to begin to locate yield. Then we determine what the bond is worth and what we are willing to pay. This is not simple because of the complexities and variations of bond structures, such as purpose, maturity, coupon, state, call provisions, and other specific items in the indenture.

The spread between a bid and the ask (offer price) can be as low as 20bps or 1/5th of 1.00% for large institutional blocks and as wide of 1 to 2 full point ($10 to $20 per $1000 bond) for smaller lots of bonds. The vast number of unique municipal bonds creates lower average trading volume and wider spreads than U.S. Treasuries. On 500 bonds at par or $500,000 that a one-point spread is $5,000. Our clients prefer not to pay the extra $5,000 or 1 point to purchase 500 bonds.

The key to our shared success is patience. Anybody can log on to Schwab, click a button and purchase a MuniBond at the offer price and be done in minutes. You are most likely looking at Vanguard’s or Morgan Stanley’s inventory and this buyer will be the last buyer after a succession of markups.

We spend our time on the bid-side of the market where 95 out of our 100 bids are not accepted. This takes weeks to build a custom municipal bond portfolio for a new investor.

Please read about "Our Process" for further detail

Our goal is to deliver 15-20% more income net of our fee to the client through our process-driven Municipal Bond Advantage Strategy. Through our process of identifying mispriced, misunderstood bonds and other inherent inefficiencies in the municipal bond marketplace, our conservative investors not only sleep at night, but they enjoy the satisfaction of earning more tax-free income.