Muni Mutual Funds See $492M of Inflows

Municipal bond mutual funds kept attracting cash last week as investors continued to embrace state and local government debt.

Investors entrusted $492.6 million to muni funds that report their figures weekly during the week ended April 8, according to AMG Data Services.

This was the 14th consecutive weekly inflow, according to the Arcata, Calif.-based fund tracker.

Among all muni funds, including those that report their figures monthly, total assets have recovered to $369.12 billion. Assets had shriveled to as low as $336.94 billion in December, which marked a 15.3% contraction in less than four months.

That contraction was driven by about $9.4 billion in outflows and $45 billion in market losses between Sept. 10 and Dec. 17, AMG said.

So far this year, muni funds have attracted $13.8 billion in inflows and reported $13.06 billion in market gains.

Fund assets are still down from the peak of nearly $400 billion last year.

The latest inflows came during a quiet week for munis. The Bond Buyer Municipal Bond Index is at 103-19, compared with 103-07 a week ago.

During the seven days measured in this report, the yield on the triple-A curve at 10 years on the Municipal Market Data scale slipped one basis point to 3.15%.

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