Quarterly Review: Forget Space. Let's Talk Infrastructure

Nick Venditti: Hi, I'm Nick Venditti, head of Municipal Fixed Income at Allspring Global Investments, and I am here to talk to you today about space, because everyone wants to talk about space. That's not true. I don't care about space. I care about things that are here on the ground. There's nothing in space, but municipalities in the United States are everywhere. They are your states, your cities, your counties, your water and sewer systems, your mass transportation, your airports, and your hospitals. They are the infrastructure that guides our daily lives. And, as a result of that, we've seen very strong muni performance through the first half of this year—driven by the fact that everything else in the world has been incredibly volatile. The boring has paid. And as we look forward into the back half of the year, we think the boring is going to continue to pay. Look, there is a ton of uncertainty—from a geopolitical perspective, from an asset valuation perspective, from a strength of the global economy perspective. At any time in any market where there is that much certainty, it often pays for investors to take a breath, reassess their risk profile, and allocate assets accordingly. We continue to believe that munis are going to perform well in a very volatile world because they are foundational to our everyday lives.