Municipal Bond

Active bond management is a constant process that demands imagination, discipline and judgment. Knowing that what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow injects a level of dynamism that is both humbling and exhilarating.

One of the driving factors of our investment philosophy is that we focus on protecting our client's income and principal. Investors often make the mistake of focusing purely on protecting their principal and keep their bond duration too short. Yet, this subjects the portfolio to significant reinvestment risk and investors can lose out on considerable income in periods of declining interest rates. Our focus is on protecting both income and principal through a total return approach.

The muni market is one of the most inefficient marketplaces. It's large, it's fragmented and it's poorly understood. It really begs for active management. And unlike most investors, we actively look for opportunities and use our technical knowledge and extensive experience to take advantage of the market.

I believe our municipal bond team has unmatched longevity within the industry. Our portfolio managers have worked together at GW&K for over 25 years. Investing at GW&K is a highly collaborative effort. We believe our clients benefit greatly by the learning experience our team has received by having been through numerous interest rate cycles and credit cycles.

Our process for choosing credits is very rigorous. It's bottom up and research intensive. We take the entire universe of about 50,000 different issuing authorities and we narrow that down to less than 500. So we focus on quality and are very selective.