Markets

In a stunning reversal of recent patterns, tax-exempt money market funds amassed $4.64 billion of new cash as total net assets soared to $274.7 billion in the week ended July 9.

The market continued to show its confidence in municipal bond mutual funds with strong inflows following a holiday week of relative inactivity.

Nearly three-quarters of the tobacco settlement bonds rated by Moody's Investors Service will default if smokers keep up their current pace of kicking or cutting back on their habit, the agency warns in a new report.

With an eye toward expansion, Memphis-based FTN Financial Capital Markets recently brought on six new traders and sales professionals for its muni division.

One analyst is finding opportunity in the intermediate part of the yield curve – where the risk is modest and the rewards are the greatest compared to the short and long ends of the curve, and is also recommending the municipal market overall as a safe alternative at a time of shifting investor sentiment.

Lawmakers and financial market participants sparred over the economic and business impact of the Dodd-Frank Bill and the so-called Volcker Rule, as well as fallout from potential new money market rules.

Top Illinois finance officials are on the road to sell institutional investors on the tidy structure of the state's sale issue next week of $1.5 billion of double-A rated unemployment bonds that are insulated against the state's well-publicized liquidity and budget struggles.

After falling from August 2009 to February 2012, local government employment may finally have turned a corner in the last four months.

The wave of mergers sweeping across the non profit health care sector the past two years is a positive trend for hospitals as well as for investors who like to buy hospital bonds, Fitch Ratings said in a new comment.