Daniel Cohen joined Cabrera Capital Markets last week as its head of municipal trading.
Cohen, who has more than two decades of experience in munis, sees Cabrera as an opportunity. He has a vision to help the firm build client relationships and grow its risk profile.
"This is really a relationship business," Cohen said. "This is using my career, as far as the 22 years and all those relationships that I forged over time. I'm going to leverage that into growing the Cabrera brand."
Prior to joining Cabrera, Cohen was a partner at private investment fund MTR Municipal Strategies. He also spent 12 years as a trader at RBC and seven years at Citigroup.
"We're excited to welcome Dan to the Cabrera team," said Managing Director Tom Rasmussen, in a release. "His leadership and experience are central to expanding our trading platform and reflects Cabrera's commitment to institutional investors and our growing public finance franchise."
Cohen and Rasmussen met 20 years ago when they both worked at Citi. They had been discussing a move to Cabrera for some time.
Cohen's role at MTR Municipal Strategies was on the buy side, but all of his prior experience was on the sell side. He realized he was "wired" to be in a sell-side position.
Cabrera, a smaller firm than RBC or Citi, offers Cohen the opportunity to be "entrepreneurial" and build out the firm's profile. Working at a smaller firm also offers more freedom to specialize, Cohen said.
"At the bigger shops, you have to be everything to everyone," Cohen said. Cabrera has "given me the opportunity [to focus on] Midwest credits or transportation credits or airport credits and really try to be the best at those specific sectors."
On a day-to-day basis, Cohen will work on forging and enhancing relationships with Cabrera's customer base. In the long term, he wants to build the firm's risk profile and help it provide liquidity to the market.
"That's going to be our goal. [To] be a leader in our weight class, as far as a liquidity provider," Cohen said. "Because of the volatility … I think there's less and less firms and banks out there taking as much risk as they used to."
Cohen's started at Cabrera last week and will be based in its New York City office.
Cohen said his experience will help him navigate the market's current volatility.
"From a timing standpoint, I don't think the entry point could be any greater," Cohen said. "You have nominal yields a lot higher. You have tax exemption being a major focus for the investor base."
The uncertainty creates tail risk, Cohen acknowledged.
"But I think that creates a great opportunity to get involved and help our customer base and be a form of liquidity," Cohen said. "Even if it's not putting actual risk up, but actually using our relationships to help them find liquidity."
