Finance

April's "poor performance" pushed munis further into negative territory, but "despite the poor start to the year, they may still end the year positive," said Cooper Howard, a fixed-income strategist at Charles Schwab.

"It'll be very interesting to see when an event happens or the market get sloppy, what the secondary market does," said a sellside panelist at a Bond Buyer market outlook panel in Florida.

The rating agency revised the outlook on the state's AA general obligation rating to positive from stable and said there is a one-in-three chance of a future rating upgrade.

"We remain cautious with respect to duration given the uncertain macro and geopolitical environment though optically, yields seem attractive in the current range," said Wells Fargo's Vikram Rai.

New York Fed President John Williams said the Fed "will cut rates eventually" during a fireside chat at Milken Institute's Global conference on Monday.

A supply surge hits the market as The Bond Buyer 30-day visible bond volume ticks in at $17.67 billion, $10 billion of which will come the first full week of May, just as macroeconomic data moves all markets to rally.

Assured's controlling vote is "important to investors who were reassured to hear that there would be a large sophisticated party with a significant economic interest in the success of the project," the insurer said.

The "historical runway" heading into Memorial Day is favorable, rolling into the summer redemption months of June through August, said James Pruskowski, chief investment officer at 16Rock Asset Management.

Munis posted losses in April, returning negative 1.24%. The asset class is also seeing losses of 1.62% year-to-date.

Alaska's efforts to manage its cyclical revenues brought an upgrade from S&P Global Ratings and positive outlook from Moody's Ratings.

While munis were steady Tuesday, yields have risen over the past several weeks as "larger supply is part of a strong [year-to-date] trend for tax-exempts," said Matt Fabian, a partner at Municipal Market Analytics.

Bonds from the authorization will likely be broken over three separate sales.

Preliminary issuance figures for April are at $39.39 billion, up 18% from April 2023.

The Virginia Resources Authority and the Virginia Housing Development Authority have deals on tap while gilt-edged Delaware is selling its GO debt.

"Bond market investors are all wishing that April was behind us as they are anxious to hear the Fed's statement at its next FOMC meeting," noted BofA Global Research. "The statement should be no surprise as the market consensus has converged to 'higher for longer' rates.

UBS' Head of Municipal Trading Doug Vissicchio joins Bond Buyer's Lynne Funk to talk muni shop.

S&P Global Ratings joined Moody's in assigning a negative outlook to its triple-A rating, but a criteria change pushed Fitch's rating of the city up to AAA.

Inflows returned to muni mutual funds as investors added $200.3 million for the week ending Wednesday after $1.474 billion of outflows, according to LSEG Lipper.

"Each party in this deal benefits in some way," said Seema Mohanty, founder of Mohanty Gargiulo.

The "impressive" investor appetite for tax-exempts has been "holding steady all quarter despite expensive valuations, supply surges and periods of low reinvestment demand," said GW&K Investment Management strategists in a report.