Under normal circumstances, the Fund invests at least 80% of its assets (defined as net assets plus borrowing for investment purposes) in fixed-income securities. The Fund defines fixed-income securities as fixed or floating rate cash equivalents, debt instruments, preferred stock, and exchange-traded funds ("ETFs") that primarily invest in the preceding instruments. Fixed income securities are selected without restriction as to maturity, credit quality (including high yield or junk bonds), currency, issuer country or capitalization. However, preferred stocks are limited to 30% of the Fund's portfolio. The Fund's investment advisor delegates execution of the Fund's investment strategy to Advisors Capital Management, LLC (the "Sub-Advisor"). The Sub-Advisor primarily employs a fund-of-funds strategy by using ETFs.

The Sub-Advisor seeks total return with capital preservation as a secondary objective by employing an opportunistic and unconstrained investment strategy to access the what it believes to be the most attractive total return opportunities based on prevailing market conditions. However, the Fund will comply with its 80% investment policy. Unconstrained is intended to allow for a broad spectrum of investment instruments, not limited to investment grade, high yield, corporates or preferred stocks. Prevailing market conditions refers to the current market environment including, but not limited to such factors to as interest rates, credit spreads and the macroeconomic outlook. The Sub-Advisor conducts a macro environment analysis before reviewing fundamental research and applying proprietary internal value screens for potential investments, including a credit analysis screen.

The Sub-Advisor's ongoing review process focuses on:

To maintain the secondary investment objective of capital preservation, the Sub-Advisor may invest in cash equivalents and/or any other security or ETF with similar capital preservation characteristics at the Sub-Advisor's discretion. The Sub-Advisor is unconstrained in the allocation to such investments and may invest up to 100% of the portfolio in such "defensive" positions. The Sub-Advisor may also invest up to 20% of the Fund's assets in inverse ETFs in an effort to hedge risks such as interest rate risk. Inverse funds are designed to deliver performance opposite of that of a benchmark index.

The Sub-Advisor sells securities when it believes they are not consistent with the primary and/or secondary investment objective as discussed above. The Sub-Advisor may engage in frequent trading to achieve the Fund's investment objective, which may result in turnover in excess of 100%.