Finance

With supply ballooning, reinvestment dollars at lows of the year, J.P. Morgan's Peter DeGroot argues the next few weeks could offer the best opportunity to buy bonds of the year – and possibly the rate cycle. DeGroot talks about this, plus potential impacts of shifting investor behavior on market liquidity, and what the upcoming election might mean for tax policy and the muni market. Lynne Funk hosts.

Disruption was on the minds of those gathered in Chicago last week for MuniTech, a conference billed as a magnet for the "tech-forward" in public finance.

"As September draws to a close, some dynamics may prevail in October but others could undergo a shift," said NewSquare Capital's Kim Olsan. "One aspect that will continue is the level of supply coming to market." 

Municipal triple-A yield curves closed out the week with few changes, valuations were little changed, but at attractive levels, and the forward calendar climbs to more than $10 billion to open the fourth quarter.

Ramirez & Co. continues growth plans with the addition of bankers in Texas, Florida and New York.

High-yield muni issuance totals $20 billion year-to-date, "reflecting normalization from relatively depressed levels in 2023 ($7.6 billion over the comparable period), and now virtually equal to the trailing five-year average for the period ($20.1 billion)," said J.P. Morgan strategists, led by Peter DeGroot.

Matthew McQueen, Head of Municipal Banking and Markets and Global Mortgages within the Global Markets business at Bank of America, sits down with Bond Buyer Executive Editor Lynne Funk to talk about getting deals done amid an uncertain global macroeconomic landscape.

The Investment Company Institute reported $1.329 billion of inflows into municipal bond mutual funds for the week ending Sept. 18 after $1.402 billion of inflows the week prior. Exchange-traded funds saw $55 million of inflows after $1.048 billion of inflows the previous week.

Demand for munis looks "fairly stable" for now, particularly after the 10- to 25-basis-point rally ended in the 30 days before the Federal Reserve cut rates last week, Municipal Market Analytics, Inc. said, noting the "bull-steepening adjustment" looks like the 30-day move before the beginning of the Fed's last cutting cycle, at the end of July 2019.

This collaboration allows users with a DPC Data subscription to access content directly within BondWave's Effi, providing Effi users with more information for all municipal bond positions in their portfolio.

S&P Global Ratings placed more than 400 state and local government issuers under criteria observation as the agency adopts an updated rating methodology.

NYPA's green designation and two credit upgrades are drawing lots of attention in a crowded market.

Several factors make the current market "an attractive entry point" into the muni market, AllianceBernstein strategists said. For one, municipal valuations are cheap to fair value relative to U.S. Treasuries, partially due to the surge of supply in 2024.

The Los Angeles Unified School District bonds carry a sustainability label with a third party opinion from Kestrel.

"Active ETFs are becoming an integral part of investor portfolios around the world, with financial advisors increasingly incorporating them into their models-based practice," a BlackRock spokesperson said.

"Should September's positive returns hold as we expect, it would mark the fourth consecutive month of positive total returns — the first such period since the five-month period spanning from March through July 2021," BofA strategists Yingchen Li and Ian Rogow said.

Warnings, finger pointing, and political infighting have consumed talks around a continuing resolution, but the details of the upcoming funding package are expected to be ironed out over the weekend for a likely vote early next week.

The airport's first new money foray into the muni market in nearly 12 years will begin to fund a $1.3 billion transformation plan.

While the municipal market barely budged following the Fed's decision to cut rates 50 basis points, Thursday saw muni yields rise up to two basis points, depending on the scale, but still lagged the weakness in USTs. LSEG Lipper reported $716 million of inflows into municipal bond mutual funds.

The product is designed to give SOLVE's customers visibility into "next-trade" pricing data for more than 900,000 munis.