Christine Albano is a reporter in the Investor’s & Investing beat, which she has covered for the past two decades. She has a wide range of buy side sources in the municipal market and has covered trends affecting retail investors, institutions, municipal mutual funds, tax-exempt money market funds, and the high-yield beat. She has also written about some of the industry’s biggest issues, such as historic defaults in Orange County, Calif., Puerto Rico, and Jefferson County, Ala., as well as the collapse of the variable-rate demand market. In addition, she reported on the subsequent 2008 financial crisis, and the death of municipal bond pioneer Jim Lebenthal. She provided next day coverage of the impact on the municipal bond market of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and recently interviewed The Vanguard Group Inc. founder, former chief executive officer, and investment guru John C. Bogle about the best investing advice for the municipal market.
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The muni analyst works on distressed credits, and acts as mentor to younger colleagues.
September 9 -
Supply clocks in at $5.987 billion for the holiday-shortened week. Municipal new-issue volume is still lagging demand with Bond Buyer 30-day visible supply at $10.30 billion, while Bloomberg shows net negative supply at $11.430 billion.
September 3 -
Returns of negative 0.40% would be the third-worst August performance of the past 10 years, according to Bloomberg data.
August 30 -
While municipals were little changed, broader markets remain focused on Jackson Hole and speculating what will be said about tapering.
August 24 -
Volume was down as state and local government municipalities benefited from federal stimulus aid and increasing tax and revenue receipts.
August 23 -
Municipal bonds ended the week unchanged for the sixth consecutive trading session as inflows surged as more than $7 billion is headed to market next week.
August 20 -
Municipals were unchanged for the fourth consecutive day this week amid slight Treasury strength as demand for yield continued.
August 19 -
Demand was brisk in the primary market while the short-term market traded sideways on the pressure from the heavy new issue calendar, the release of the FOMC minutes and Treasury auction.
August 18 -
The Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority sold $813 million of senior lien revenue bonds consisting of tax-exempt refunding, taxable refunding and forward delivery refunding bonds.
August 17 -
As New York City launched the first of its two-day retail order period on $1.039 billion of GO bonds, the market was uneventful ahead of $9.76 billion in the primary market this week
August 16 -
Another $2 billion-plus was reported flowing into municipal bond mutual funds in the latest week, continuing to be a supportive demand component for munis.
August 11 -
Municipals are tethered to Treasuries, more so in recent sessions, and have cheapened, but strong technicals — $18.5 billion of net negative supply and large reinvestment needs — still hang overhead.
August 10 -
With all eyes on Friday’s employment report, since several additional strong months of gains are needed for the Federal Reserve to be comfortable announcing a tapering of its asset purchases, Wednesday’s news could signal trouble.
August 4 -
A municipal analyst for 43 years, Baker was head of MAGNY in 1993 and NFMA in 1997.
August 2 -
The economy continues to recover, with durable goods orders and consumer confidence suggesting strength, but concerns about the Delta variant of COVID-19 and continued supply-chain problems cloud the future outlook.
July 27 -
Low ratios, low yields and massive demand are leading to a market that is mostly on its own. Refinitiv Lipper reported $1.7 billion of inflows.
July 22 -
The larger new issues and aggressive swings in taxables had investors on guard as triple-A curves were pressured outside 10-years, but the asset class still vastly outperformed UST while ICI reports nearly $3 billion more inflows.
July 21 -
Weill was involved in the municipal bond insurance industry from its inception in the late 1960s, as well as the original entrepreneurial group that created MBIA and its predecessors.
July 16 -
Gilt-edged munis fell as much as two basis points Wednesday as the month ended and the first half stats were put into the record books.
June 30 -
Making it a summer Friday, munis were quiet. Participants contemplate why the market underperformed taxables to the degree they did when fundamentals are objectively strong and little has changed since before the FOMC.
June 25
