Finance

The general bias toward muni rates is that they would be a bit higher with technicals "being a little less supportive than they were in August, plus what we heard with from the Fed 'higher for longer,' and potentially another hike," said Jeff MacDonald, head of Fixed Income Strategies at Fiduciary Trust International.

Ocean Capital's next move is to attemot to have its elected directors seated on the funds' board of directors.

As was expected, the FOMC held rates in a range between 5.25% and 5.50%, but the dot plot in the Summary of Economic Projections showed 12 of 19 members expect another 25-basis-point rate hike this year.

Fund flows "should be moving along a more positive trajectory, but they have yet to do so with munis unable to break free of the Treasury market's tight grip," Oppenheimer's Jeff Lipton said.

Moody's also affirmed the A3 rating on the MTA's $20.6 billion of transportation revenue bonds.

With a light new-issue calendar ahead of the FOMC meeting, "secondary flows may benefit from greater attention," said Kim Olsan, senior vice president at FHN Financial.

The GOP stopgap funding measure may only kick the can down the road for a month, but how this bill passes will have implications for how Congress feels about additional spending measures.

"We believe investors should take advantage of the current high rates environment: investors should pick and choose bonds selectively in the coming weeks in anticipation of this tightening cycle's end after November," BofA strategists said.

Loop Capital Markets CEO Jim Reynolds, Jr. said he would gladly pay a bit more for a muni bond that tackled gang violence in Chicago during a debate on ESG factors among market veterans at The Bond Buyer's infrastructure conference this week.

The rating is the first so far released for a controversial debt sale that will begin financing a $5 billion, 15-year toll road expansion project.

Refinitiv Lipper reported $116.737 million was pulled from municipal bond mutual funds for the week ending Wednesday after $798.474 million of outflows from the funds the previous week.

The school district plans to price $670 million in a combined new money-refunding deal next week.

There hasn't been a huge return of capital in the muni market so far this year, with fund flows being rather anemic, said Chad Farrington, co-head of municipal bond strategy at DWS Group.

"Patrick has an excellent ability for not only understanding the complexities of the healthcare sector but connecting with our customers and telling the credit story in a way that provides meaningful and value-driven analysis to the market," said S&P Senior Director Stephen Infranco.

Concerns about large unrealized losses on bond investments have receded since the spring banking crisis, but the paper losses have started growing again in recent months. The worries today are less about banks' survival — and more about how much their margins will get squeezed.

While supply this week is "softer," uncertainty and volatility may prevail once more due to "yields still not exciting longer-term investors," said Matt Fabian, a partner at Municipal Market Analytics.

Labor costs and inflation weigh on hospitals, but improvement may be on the horizon.

Munis have had a slow start "down roughly 0.25% for the first week of September bringing year-to-date returns to 1.34%," said Jason Wong, vice president of municipals at AmeriVet Securities.

Historically, "September and, to a lesser degree, October have not been kind to municipal investors."

Building off his success in creating a revolutionary website as Massachusetts assistant treasurer of debt management, BondLink founder Colin MacNaught has grown his firm into 45 states.