The Bond Buyer’s weekly yield indexes declined this week on firmness the last two sessions following an unchanged start to the week, amid decent secondary trading activity on the long end of the curve and little interest on the short end.
“The kind of week you had really depends on the kind of paper you trade,” said Fred Yosca, managing director and head of trading at BNY Capital Markets. “If you trade the short end, you’ve had a bad week. If you trade the long end, then you probably did alright. Trading was on the lighter side, though, really because of so many people on vacation. Even the primary wasn’t as active. Monday and Tuesday were reasonably good days, but yesterday and today have been really quiet.”
In the new-issue market this week, Texas sold $5.5 billion of tax and revenue anticipation notes to various bidders. Pennsylvania competitively sold nearly $690 million of refunding general obligation bonds to Merrill, Lynch & Co., which also priced close to $700 million of taxable Build America Bonds for the Dallas County Hospital District. Citi priced $900 million of gas revenue bonds for California’s M-S-R Energy Authority.
The Bond Buyer 20-bond index of 20-year general obligation bond yields declined five basis points this week to 4.53%. That is the lowest level for the index since May 21, when it was 4.44%.
The 11-bond index of higher-grade, 20-year GO yields declined four basis points to 4.27%, which is the lowest level since May 21, when it was 4.18%.
The revenue bond index, which measures 30-year revenue bond yields, declined three basis points this week to 5.59%. This is the lowest the index has been since May 28, when it was 5.53%.
The 10-year Treasury note yield rose four basis points this week to 3.47%, but it remained below its 3.60% level from two weeks ago.
The 30-year Treasury bond was unchanged this week at 4.23%. The last time it was lower was May 14, when it was 4.07%.
The Bond Buyer one-year note index, which is based on one-year tax-exempt note yields, declined two basis points this week to 0.82%. This is its lowest level since Aug. 5, when it was 0.81%.
The weekly average yield to maturity on The Bond Buyer’s 40-bond municipal bond index, which is based on 40 long-term municipal bond prices finished at 5.40%, down 5 basis points from last week’s 5.45%.
