Securities Valuation.
Investments are usually valued as of the close of regular trading on the New York Stock Exchange (the "Exchange") (usually 4:00 p.m. Eastern time) on each day the Fund is open for business ("valuation date").
The Board of Trustees (the "Board") of the MainStay MacKay DefinedTerm Municipal Opportunities Fund (the "Fund") adopted procedures establishing methodologies for the valuation of the Fund's securities and other assets and delegated the responsibility for valuation determinations under those procedures to the Valuation Committee of the Fund (the “Valuation Committee”). The procedures state that, subject to the oversight of the Board and unless otherwise noted, the responsibility for the day-to-day valuation of portfolio assets (including fair value measurements for the Fund's assets and liabilities) rests with New York Life Investment Management LLC (“New York Life Investments” or the "Manager"), aided to whatever extent necessary by the Subadvisor to the Fund. To assess the appropriateness of security valuations, the Manager, the Subadvisor or the Fund's third-party service provider, who is subject to oversight by the Manager, regularly compares prior day prices, prices on comparable securities and the sale prices to the prior and current day prices and challenges prices with changes exceeding certain tolerance levels with third-party pricing services or broker sources.
The Board authorized the Valuation Committee to appoint a Valuation Subcommittee (the “Subcommittee”) to establish the prices of securities for which market quotations are not readily available or the prices of which are not otherwise readily determinable under the procedures. The Subcommittee meets (in person, via electronic mail or via teleconference) on an as-needed basis. The Valuation Committee meets to ensure that actions taken by the Subcommittee were appropriate.
For those securities valued through either a standardized fair valuation methodology or a fair valuation measurement, the Subcommittee deals with such valuation and the Valuation Committee reviews and affirms, if appropriate, the reasonableness of the valuation based on such methodologies and measurements on a regular basis after considering information that is reasonably available and deemed relevant by the Valuation Committee. Any action taken by the Subcommittee with respect to the valuation of a portfolio security or other asset is submitted for review and ratification (if appropriate) to the Valuation Committee and the Board at the next regularly scheduled meeting.
"Fair value" is defined as the price the Fund would reasonably expect to receive upon selling an asset or liability in an orderly transaction to an independent buyer in the principal or most advantageous market for the asset or liability. Fair value measurements are determined within a framework that establishes a three-tier hierarchy that maximizes the use of observable market data and minimizes the use of unobservable inputs to establish a classification of fair value measurements for disclosure purposes. "Inputs" refer broadly to the assumptions that market participants would use in pricing the asset or liability, including assumptions about risk, such as the risk inherent in a particular valuation technique used to measure fair value using a pricing model and/or the risk inherent in the inputs for the valuation technique. Inputs may be observable or unobservable. Observable inputs reflect the assumptions market participants would use in pricing the asset or liability based on market data obtained from sources independent of the Fund. Unobservable inputs reflect the Fund’s own assumptions about the assumptions market participants would use in pricing the asset or liability based on the information available. The inputs or methodology used for valuing assets or liabilities may not be an indication of the risks associated with investing in those assets or liabilities. The three-tier hierarchy of inputs is summarized below.
| • | Level 1—quoted prices in active markets for an identical asset or liability |
| • | Level 2—other significant observable inputs (including quoted prices for a similar asset or liability in active markets, interest rates and yield curves, prepayment speeds, credit risk, etc.) |
| • | Level 3—significant unobservable inputs (including the Fund's own assumptions about the assumptions that market participants would use in measuring fair value of an asset or liability) |
The level of an asset or liability within the fair value hierarchy is based on the lowest level of an input, both individually and in the aggregate, that is significant to the fair value measurement. The aggregate value by input level of the Fund’s assets and liabilities as of August 31, 2021, is included at the end of the Portfolio of Investments.
The Fund may use third-party vendor evaluations, whose prices may be derived from one or more of the following standard inputs, among others:
| • Benchmark yields | • Reported trades |
| • Broker/dealer quotes | • Issuer spreads |
| • Two-sided markets | • Benchmark securities |
| • Bids/offers | • Reference data (corporate actions or material event notices) |
| • Industry and economic events | • Comparable bonds |
| • Monthly payment information | |
