Markets

Fitch Ratings placed all charter school bonds it rates on Rating Watch Negative after adopting changes to how it evaluates such credits.

Moody's Investors Service has downgraded 11 issuers of special tax supported bonds and upgraded three of these issuers.

Underwriters may soon have to adapt to changes in the way they market, conduct, and report the results of retail order periods if the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board gets its way under a new proposal. The securities regulatory agency is seeking to improve and make retail order periods even safer for issuers and investors.

Retail order periods were first designed to give individual mom and pop investors some muscle in the battle for bond allocations by giving their orders for new issues priority consideration a day or two before the official pricing. Some 15 years later, retail order periods have enjoyed a long track record, growing in popularity and continuing to be an important component of the new-issue pricing process for issuers and investors, municipal experts and underwriters said.

Primary market volume should increase substantially this week. Potential issuance is expected to total $8.64 billion, up from total sales of $4.04 billion last week.

In what was the first sizable inflow activity in nearly a month, tax-exempt money market funds increased by $1.94 billion as total net assets grew to $270.25 billion for the week ended Sept. 10, according to The Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

Municipal bond mutual funds saw $820 million in inflows into funds that report their flows weekly for the week ended Sept. 12.

Light supply and a perceived hesitation on investors' parts conspired to hold the municipal market to only modest outperformance against Treasuries this week.

MBIA Inc. is fielding a new law suit and Assured Guaranty is seeking an additional credit rating.