Putnam NY Tax Exempt Income APTEIX

It's not that Putnam New York Tax Exempt does much wrong--it just doesn't do enough that's right.

We wouldn't want to knock it for last year, though. Investors here for 2008 can take solace in the fund's avoidance of much worse trouble. It lost 6.9% as the financial crisis drained the market of liquidity, punished high-quality long-term bonds that had been used in aggressive strategies, and, in a particularly cruel twist, torpedoed hedges that sought to protect muni portfolios using taxable market derivatives.  Read more 

This New York municipal-bond fund follows a fairly standard strategy. Management avoids making large interest-rate bets. Instead, it tries to add value through issue selection and by rotating the fund's assets among different maturities and sectors.  Read more 

Paul Drury, Susan McCormack, Thalia Meehan, and Brad Libby manage this fund. Each member is responsible for certain sectors of the municipal-bond market. Meehan and Libby joined the fund in 2006, while McCormack and Drury joined in 2002.  Read more 

This fund has had manager changes, with one boss departing in October 2006 and another in January 2007. It remains to be seen whether the current skippers--Putnam veterans who are using the same approach as before--can keep it competitive over the long term.  Read more