Finance

Investors added $672.3 million to municipal bond mutual funds in the week ended Wednesday, following $590.4 million of inflows the prior week, according to LSEG Lipper data.

A injunction blocked the service cuts that would have balanced SEPTA's budget. 

Looking solely at internal factors, "the municipal market itself is still doing well, reasonably via the temporary drop in new issue supply amid a more lasting reduction in reinvestment flows," said Matt Fabian, a partner at Municipal Market Analytics.

BondLink's client issuers reached over $500 billion in bond sales while working with the municipal bond platform.

The underwriting firm's hires will expand its real estate development finance group and Southeast operations.

Thanks to strong technicals and the anticipated interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve at its September meeting, municipal bonds posted positive returns of 0.87% in August, reversing their losses of 0.20% in July, according to Jason Wong, vice president municipals at AmeriVet Securities.

Issuance for the week of Sept. 2 is at an estimated $7.457 billion, with $6.179 billion of negotiated deals and $1.278 billion of competitive deals on tap, according to LSEG.

Legacy Health, an eight-hospital Portland, Ore.-based healthcare system, that abandoned merger plans in May received a downgrade and negative outlook from Moody's Ratings.

The world's biggest opera house has been downgraded for the second time this year.

With the break in issuance this week, the market has firmed a bit, said Tim McGregor, managing partner at Riverbend Capital Advisors.

While issuance has been on a record pace this year, this week sees a slight slowdown in activity, caused by participants going on vacation, said Jeff Timlin, a partner at Sage Advisory.

While issuance is up year-over-year, weeks like this can be difficult to find the right deals, said Whitney Fitts, director of municipal portfolio management at Appleton Partners.

"We expect subdued activity again [this] week heading into the Labor Day holiday," Birch Creek strategists said.

Munis underperformed a UST rally, which had everything to do with Powell's speech at the Jackson Hole symposium and future Fed action, said Cooper Howard, a fixed income strategist at Charles Schwab.

San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit has struggled to regain ridership after the pandemic.

A state lawmaker is asking the court to invalidate a 2022 nearly $700 million bond sale due to inadequate audits by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.

A possible explanation is that the massive inflows into mutual funds are a parallel move to large inflows into the Capital Group Municipal High-Income ETF, which saw the biggest inflow of a ETF on Friday at $1.5 billion, said Pat Luby, head of municipal strategy at CreditSights.

FOMC meeting minutes "clearly show why they didn't cut rates," said Northlight Asset Management Chief Investment Officer Chris Zaccarelli.

The 10-campus public university system apparently scrapped plans to price $1.5 billion in debt this week.

Gary Hall and Sobani Warner were named co-presidents of Siebert Williams Shank as CEO Suzanne Shank focuses on client relationships and strategic initiatives.