Credit Quality Breakdown

For corporate-bond and municipal-bond portfolios, credit analysis depicts the quality of bond holdings. It reveals the percentage of fixed-income securities that fall within each credit-quality rating.

Each fixed income security and cash instrument in a fund is assigned to one of the following eight categories for the credit quality calculation. The percentages represent the assets in that rating level as a percent of all fixed income and cash assets.

AAA, AA, A, BBB, BB, B, Below B, Not Rated

Ratings data provided to Morningstar in one of the first seven categories (AAA through Below B) only reflects ratings assigned by one of the Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations (NRSRO). So-called internal, or manager-derived, credit ratings are not to be included in those categories; rather, bonds not rated by an NRSRO are included in the not rated (NR) category. For the purpose of Morningstar�s calculations, U.S. government securities are considered AAA bonds.

Morningstar is sensitive to the reality that some vendors use Moody's Investor Service ratings rather than or in addition to S&P ratings classifications. Below is a chart showing the equivalent Moody's rating class for each S&P rating tier.