FOCUSING ON ADDRESSING THE SPECIFIC RESEARCH NEEDS OF CLIENTS THROUGH A HIGH-TOUCH, CLIENT-FOCUSED APPROACH. Investment Strategy.

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1 Investment Strategy Economics Policy Research Sector Strategy Bespoke Research FOCUSING ON ADDRESSING THE SPECIFIC RESEARCH NEEDS OF CLIENTS THROUGH A HIGH-TOUCH, CLIENT-FOCUSED APPROACH.

2 OUR FIRM Strategas Research Partners was established to provide timely and insightful investment & sector strategy, macro-economic and policy research to the institutional investment community. The Firm is focused on addressing the specific research needs of our clients through a high-touch, client-focused approach. The Firm believes that making analysts easily available to clients and limiting its research distribution to a small number of institutional clients adds additional value. Recognizing that institutional investors have no shortage of options when it comes to investment research, Strategas works hard to distill, thoughtfully and concisely, complex investment concepts into easily understandable and actionable ideas and themes for investors of all styles and time horizons every day. The Firm actively seeks opportunities to go beyond its written reports by providing its clients with customized and specific research solutions. Research Principles Utility. There are three ways in which investment strategy, economic and policy research can be useful: By being accurate By identifying important themes By providing enough raw and provocative research material to allow our clients to make up their own minds or to be used in their own marketing material. Quality & Thoroughness of Output. The Firm recognizes that its credibility is on the line every time it publishes a report or makes an investment forecast. Strategas is committed to making sure that the inputs used to create its research products are comprehensive and accurate. Humility. Sadly, the first of these basic elements of utility correctly divining the movements of the markets and the madness of crowds is the most elusive. The Firm recognizes that, despite its best efforts, it will often be wrong. It is impossible to have all the facts when making investment forecasts. The Firm s analysts will remain vigilant to always be aware of and respect other points of view and to remain intellectually flexible and humble enough to change its forecasts when the facts change. Simplicity & Clarity. Our clients have too much to read. Strategas seeks to provide clear and concise research that allows our clients to remain informed and to make better investment decisions quickly.

3 OUR TEAM Jason DeSena Trennert Managing Partner Chief Investment Strategist Mr. Trennert is the Managing Partner and Chief Investment Strategist of the Firm. He has been ranked consistently by Institutional Investor magazine as one of the top Strategists on Wall Street and has been named to SmartMoney magazine s Power 30 list of the most influential people in the world of investing. He has earned a reputation as a keen market observer and for his regular, and often humorous, essays on investing. Widely quoted in the domestic and foreign press, he is a regular guest host on CNBC s Squawk Box. He is the author of the popular investment book, New Markets, New Strategies, published in 2005 by McGraw Hill. Prior to founding Strategas, Mr. Trennert was the Chief Investment Strategist and a Senior Managing Director at International Strategy & Investment (ISI) Group where he built and oversaw two of that Firm s most popular research efforts, the Company Surveys and more recently, its Investment Strategy Group. He has an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and BS in International Economics from Georgetown University. Nicholas Bohnsack Operating Partner Sector Strategist Mr. Bohnsack is the Operating Partner of the Firm. In addition to overseeing the Firm s day-to-day operations he directs its sector and equity estimate research efforts. He has been voted among the Best Up & Comers for Portfolio Strategy in the Institutional Investor All-American Research survey. Prior to co-founding Strategas, he was an Investment Strategist and Associate Managing Director with International Strategy & Investment (ISI) Group. Prior to joining ISI, he worked in the Investment Banking Group at FactSet and in Restricted Securities at Morgan Stanley. Mr. Bohnsack received his MS in Mathematics from Fairfield University and received degrees in Economics and Finance from Bryant University. He is a Board member of the Bryant University Endowment s Archway Investment Fund. Donald J. Rissmiller Partner Chief Economist Mr. Rissmiller is a Partner at Strategas and the Firm s Chief Economist, directing its macroeconomic research effort. He oversees Strategas high-frequency econometric forecasting. Mr. Rissmiller s research has been recognized by Institutional Investor magazine in their annual survey for the past two years, and he was voted their Best Up & Coming economist in Prior to co-founding Strategas in 2006, he was an Economist and Managing Director at International Strategy & Investment (ISI) Group. Before joining ISI, Mr. Rissmiller worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he focused on the analysis of U.S. macroeconomic data and price/wage forecasting models. Mr. Rissmiller earned his AB in Economics magna cum laude from Harvard University. Daniel Clifton Partner Head of Policy Research Mr. Clifton is a Partner and the head of the Firm s DC office. He directs its legislative and public policy research efforts. Prior to joining Strategas he served as Executive Director of the American Shareholders Association (ASA), a non-partisan, non-profit organization which analyzes public policy affecting shareholders. His research and political analysis on the interaction between legislation, policy and equity markets has been widely cited in the media. Prior to joining the ASA, Mr. Clifton served as Chief Economist and Federal Affairs Manager for Americans for Tax Reform and as a senior staff member in two gubernatorial administrations working on economic issues. Mr. Clifton received a MS in Economics and Public Finance from Rutgers University and a BA in Urban Planning and Policy Development also from Rutgers.

4 OUR PRODUCTS Investment Strategy Our Institutional Investor-ranked Investment & Sector Strategy team, led by Jason Trennert & Nicholas Bohnsack, works to identify the major themes with broad implications for the global financial markets. By working closely with the Firm s Economics and Washington Policy teams, the Firm s strategists seek to provide accurate projections of aggregate corporate profits, valuation, profit margin, size and style trends, and long-term targets of the major equity indices. The driving tenets of fundamental, empirical, and technical research serve to compliment the team s thematic and macro-driven approach. In addition, the team actively works with clients to improve information flow within their investment process paying particular respect to asset allocation and sector rotation. An emphasis is placed on delivering timely information in a concise manner through the dissemination of daily written publications and customized research projects. The team s analysts are also available for regular conference calls, client meetings, and group presentations. Our high-touch client approach and the availability of our analyst team compliments our more proprietary and datadriven efforts. Through the publication of our monthly Market Balance Sheet, Proprietary Bellwether Index, and Strategas Sentiment Indicator, the Strategy team provides clients with a unique, first principles framework for analyzing the trajectory of market, sector, and industry group trends. Economics Our Institutional Investor-ranked Economics Team, led by Don Rissmiller, employs an analytical and quantitative approach to provide a consistent macro-economic framework for our institutional fixed income and equity clients. The team makes standard forecasts and projections of economic growth, inflation, and short and long-term interest rates, including Fed policy. As a former New York Federal Reserve economist, Mr. Rissmiller, and his team, which includes a former economist from the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, offer a unique perspective which provides the capacity to distill relevant data into actionable analysis. The publication of frequent data-intensive updates, coupled with more thematic reports, helps the Firm s clients to better translate the macro-economic landscape into investable opportunities. This discipline, along with the monthly publication of more proprietary measures, like the Strategas Economics Balance Sheet, helps to ensure the accurate and timely analysis of market-moving economic trends. Additionally, a close monitoring of significant global economic developments highlights the major investment implications for our domestic and international clients alike. Policy Research Our Policy Research team, led by Daniel Clifton, works to identify federal, state, and local policy initiatives that have direct investment implications. Based in Washington, D.C., the team navigates the legislative, executive, and regulatory landscapes to offer the Firm s clients forward-looking information, relevant to their portfolio holdings. An emphasis is placed on identifying the sectors and industry groups most impacted by future legislative and regulatory actions, within the context of the dynamic political environment. Experienced in political and policy research and analysis, the Policy Research team offers insights on the changing policy landscape and the risks and opportunities for investors. The team also utilizes contacts within the public and private sectors to ensure accurate and timely information, allowing the Firm s clients to better distill political noise from potential investment opportunity. Furthermore, the Policy Research team seeks to introduce clients directly with policymakers and other Washington insiders. Through the regular publication of written reports, frequent conference calls, customized projects, and direct meetings, the Policy Research team is actively engaged in ensuring the firm s client base remains steps ahead of policy changes. Bespoke Research Our Bespoke Research team works most closely with the Firm s clients on customized and special projects across the Firm s four research verticals Investment Strategy, Economics, Washington Research, and Sector Strategy. Our team strives to return special requests and customized projects within a timely fashion so as to be most useful to the Firm s clients. In addition, the team is available to fulfill any requests for charts and data published in our daily written reports. Most importantly, the team recognizes that current market dynamics make it difficult for many of our clients to dedicate the necessary time compiling and analyzing the data needed to make sound and complete investment conclusions. To assist our clients in this respect, our team possesses both the wide range of resources and strong commitment level needed to add significant value throughout all stages of the investment process. As an example of our data capabilities, recent client requests have included: 1) An analysis of the S&P 500 sub-industry groups with the highest and lowest correlations to Oil, the Dollar, and Emerging Markets. 2) A historical overview of the relationship between inflation, market multiples, and interest rates over the past century. 3) The construction of a capital spending regression model used to forecast future Capex expenditures on both a sector and industry level. 4) An in-depth look at the various proposals for financial regulation and their direct implications for institutional investors.

5 WHAT S A STRATEGAS? Of all the frequently asked questions we get on the road, the one we ve received the most since we started the Firm has to do with the derivation of our company name and logo. Most people are kind in their questioning, but more than a few have been less than shy in their bewilderment. A master of nuance, Joe Kernen of CNBC said on the air, Jason, you ve been dreaming of starting your own company your whole life and this is what you came up with? Similarly, a friend and paying client intexas asked bluntly, what the $%*& is a strategas? And so we d like to explain once and for all how we came up with our rather unique name. Few now know that the word strategy is derived from the Greek word strategos which means general. In the Athenian Democracy, the strategoi stood between the elected officials and its military leaders to provide counsel in balancing the needs of protecting individual liberties while, at the same time, providing for the overall security of the state. Satisfied that we had found a name that had real meaning and the requisite pretension of antiquity, we had decided, perhaps naively that Strategos was as good as we were going to get. In the 11th hour, however, our lawyers informed us that to name the firm Strategos could invite trademark litigation. Having invested some time in the decision and becoming attached to the logo of the warrior we now affectionately call Gus, we asked our lawyers to find a vowel that would complete the word strateg_s without inviting legal action. They came up with strategas which, at that point was close enough for us and was aesthetically pleasing when using Greek lettering. There is a certain irony and sadness in the fact that, in the post-industrial and litigious society in which we live, we essentially had to choose a name that was so devoid of meaning to actually steer clear of a lawsuit. In any event, the name has been a source of amusement among our clients and friends. And, as the saying goes, we don t care what you call us, as long as you call us.

6 Strategas Research Partners, LLC is a leading investment strategy, macro-economic, and policy research firm focused on providing timely and insightful research on the global equity and debt markets to the institutional investment community. New York 52 Vanderbilt Avenue 8th Floor New York, NY United States (212) (212) fax Washington, DC 1875 I Street NW 5th Floor Washington, DC United States (202) (202) fax Geneva 9, rue du Prince 2nd Floor 1204 Geneva Switzerland (022) (022) fax info@strategasrp.com Investment Strategy Economics Policy Research Sector Strategy Bespoke Research 2009 Strategas Research Partners, LLC - All Rights Reserved