Lee Munson and Lorn Owen Davis provide an update on our independent fund research on Oppenheimer Rochester Municipal Funds (ORNAX).

Listening to the Oppenheimer Rochester Municipal Funds Conference Call on June 24, 2009 we got a chance to hear the thoughts of the experts on the municipal bond markets. The fund managers were extremely upbeat about the markets and the situation they were trading in. They view the municipal market as being in a far better place than 6 months ago with strong positive moves, though the past few weeks have seen weaker prices with the influx of large bond deals such as the biggest tax-exempt bond issue in over 2 months offered by Puerto Rico and the Build America bond program. All of these new issuances have been difficult for the market to absorb but the team at Oppenheimer thinks that the worst is over. A lot of these issuances have also been in the high grade sector with AAA ratings or above, which doesn’t really affect ORNAX since it focuses on high yield bonds.

Lee Munson and Lorn Owen Davis provide independent fund research on Rydex Managed Futures Strategy Fund (RYMFX).

Alternative strategies and assets in mutual funds can provide relief from the US equity markets for investors’ portfolios. The Rydex/SGI Managed Futures Strategy Fund (RYMFX) is an opportunity for investors to take part in that relief by adding exposure to commodity and currencies in a long short environment. RYMFX is one of the first funds to track the relatively unknown S&P Diversified Trends Indicator, a long/short momentum strategy in the major futures markets that has been strong in delivering non-correlating returns over the past 10 years. Investors utilize managed futures strategies to reduce risk in their portfolio by being uncorrelated with the stock and bond markets.

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Lee Munson and Lorn Owen Davis provide independent fund research on AQR Diversified Arbitrage Fund (ADANX, ADAIX).

In this post-Madoff world, investors are not seeking hedge fund styled over-leveraging and high risk/return strategies. But this doesn’t mean that some of the classic strategies used by hedge funds aren’t useful for other investment vehicles, like mutual funds. AQR’s Diversified Arbitrage Fund (ADANX, ADAIX) allows an investor to have exposure to hedge fund strategies without the high risk of leveraging. Its objective is to provide long-term positive returns that are uncorrelated with the stock or bond markets. This is what Modern Portfolio Theory is supposed to be about: the non-correlation of assets. Not some sales pitch on how much you have in mid cap domestic value versus small cap international growth.