UCM Partners, a private, minority-owned fixed income investment boutique based in New York City with approximately $1.7 billion in assets under management, recently announced the one-year anniversary of its Opportunistic Mortgage Strategy Fund.

The fund currently has approximately $60 million in assets under management, and UCM Partners reports that it exceeded its absolute return target of 12-15 percent by more than double in its first year.

Designed to capitalize on undervalued debt obligations primarily within the residential mortgage-backed securities (MBS) market, the fund was launched in August 2009 and is managed by UCM Partner’s chief investment officer, Jay Menozzi, and portfolio managers Boris Peresechensky and Vesta Marks.

“We are excited about the performance of our flagship fund as well as our overall platform of fixed income investment management products,” said Greg Parsons, UCM’s CEO. “We are well positioned with an experienced team, a strong and distinct investment process, a broadening platform of investment products based on our MBS experience, strong strategic partnerships, and of course our outstanding roster of institutional and fund investors.”

According to UCM Partners, the fund’s positive performance is a result of an investment process based on the company’s analytical models developed to capitalize on undervalued cash flows of securities at the top of the capital structure within the residential MBS market.

Menozzi attributes the fund’s early success to a combination of an improving market for non-agency MBS jumpstarted during 2009 by a number of government programs, as well as UCM’s quantitatively based investment process for stress testing and valuing MBS cash flows at the loan level.