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April is setting up to be a transformational month for understanding how the global economy and financial markets will recover from the COVID-19 pandemic gripping the world. Investor’s patience are being tested, and low prices may tempt some investors to rush into equities. But are there still too many unknowns?

Predicting the future path of inflation is notoriously difficult; just ask any economist. The best protection against future uncertainty is a well-constructed portfolio, tailored to meet the asset owner’s risk tolerance, portfolio objectives, and spending needs. While there are trade-offs associated with all solutions to protect a portfolio against inflation, there are ten things that investors have come to appreciate.

Born out of the hard lessons learned from early 20th-century market crashes and the First World War, the concept of a diversified investment fund was formalized under the Securities Act of 1933 and Investment Company Act of 1940. Three types of funds were created, including the closed-end funds (CEFs). It can be psychologically difficult to stay invested in tough times and amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but that’s what it takes to unlock the value of closed-end funds.

Tax alpha is a measurement of tax efficiency that attempts to isolate the value of active tax management by comparing a manager versus a passive benchmark. This metric is preferred over alternative measures of tax efficiency because it shows the investor’s actual tax experience and uses a custom benchmark to put the results in perspective. The primary shortcoming of using alternative metrics such as turnover, unrealized gains, or loss carry forwards is that they can only indicate the investor’s potential tax experience—not their actual experience.

Taxable investors are right to be concerned with measuring performance on an after-tax basis. However, to put after-tax performance in perspective requires a benchmark, just as pretax performance measurement does. Yet unlike pretax performance, after-tax performance is unique to each investor’s tax situation and asset flow patterns.

With unprecedented health concerns and economic uncertainty at the forefront of everyone’s mind, Edward Marshall sat down with Richard Perez, to provide guidance on how to put these events into perspective. Edward shared tactics on how to weather environments like those we are experiencing such as:Putting uncertainty and market volatility into perspectiveImportance of proactive communicationHow to develop an action plan

Some advisors are clamoring for managers to harvest any and all available tax losses in their clients’ accounts. But harvesting all the losses in a portfolio creates risk—risk that can cost far more than the transaction will benefit the client.

Can the municipal bond market overcome a liquidity shortage triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic? Find out which sectors carry the most risk of leading to a credit crisis.

It’s easy to say that a calm and long-term approach to market volatility is the best one—but it’s not always easy to take that approach. Now is a good time to reflect on steps to take to make sure your portfolio stays healthy. Some of these steps may be painful, since its instinctual to avoid what is perceived to be a dangerous situation. However, history has demonstrated that the most painful investment decisions tend to be the most rewarding.

Will the municipal bond market survive unprecedented economic downturn amid a growing pandemic? Find out why muni credit ratings aren’t indicative of long-term creditworthiness.