Jessica Lerner is a senior reporter and buy-side specialist for Bond Buyer where she writes the daily market column, the monthly volume story and longer trend stories. Prior to this, she worked as a beat reporter at two Connecticut newspapers. She earned her master's in business and economics reporting from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and her bachelor's in journalism and statistics from the University of Connecticut.
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"Tight underwriting spreads in 2023 followed, for the most part, a well-entrenched trajectory that has backdropped the primary municipal market for years, and so the negligible bump in spreads does not come as a surprise," said Jeff Lipton, managing director of credit research at Oppenheimer.
February 20 -
This decision will accelerate foreign buyers' reduced presence in the muni market, said Vikram Rai, head of municipal markets strategy at Wells Fargo.
February 16 -
Municipal bond mutual funds saw the second week of outflows, with LSEG Lipper reporting $142.2 million of outflows for the week ending Wednesday. High-yield funds saw inflows.
February 15 -
Despite losses, munis are still outperforming USTs and corporates on a month-to-date and year-to-date basis, noted Cooper Howard, a fixed-income strategist at Charles Schwab.
February 14 -
The consumer price index number further complicates market expectations of Fed rate cuts and muni investors may want "to keep their powder dry" until they have a better idea of the Fed's timing, said CreditSights' Pat Luby.
February 13 -
The muni market will see "continued strength," said Wesly Pate, senior portfolio manager at Income Research + Management, largely due to a a dearth of new-issue supply.
February 12 -
This volatility can be seen in the whipsawing figures from the SIFMA Municipal Swap Index Yield over the past few months, but in January in particular.
February 12 -
Municipals were steady to improved in spots in secondary trading as another day of sizable new-issues were well-received in the primary market.
February 8 -
Some participants on the Street estimate that SMAs hold as much as $1.5 trillion of munis while others peg it closer to $1 trillion to $1.3 trillion.
February 8 -
The SIFMA Swap Index fell to 3.24% Wednesday, down 50 basis points from 3.74% from the week prior, and 131 basis points from 4.55% it hit on Jan. 24 as swings continued in the VRDO market. Tax-exempt money market funds reversed course to see inflows of almost $4 billion.
February 7
