Markets

J.P. Morgan Asset Management hired two people as part of an effort to expand the firm’s municipal strategies team.

State and local governments generally will be able to take steps to address the economic turbulence they face without filing for bankruptcy or defaulting on their debt, Standard & Poor's said in a pair of reports released Monday.

Cash flows into municipal bond mutual funds last week were at the slowest pace since early in the financial crisis.

Underwriters are bracing for a challenging and busy week as a hefty $10.22 billion of new municipal volume heads to the primary market, according to Ipreo LLC and The Bond Buyer.

Build America Bonds have entered a world of their own. As the market braces for a blitz of taxable state and local government debt sales to close out the year, some experts expect the already-shaky correlations between BABs and other assets to break down.

Both tax-exempt and taxable money market funds lost cash in the weeks ending Nov. 1 and 2. Tax-exempt funds saw noticeably trimmed outflows compared with last week, while the taxable losses are in stark contrast to the previous week's short-lived period of inflows.

Heavy supply trumped easy monetary policy this week as muni yields mostly drifted higher despite the announcement of a second quantitative easing campaign from the Federal Reserve.

Dupree Funds is launching a taxable municipal bond fund this week, just the second effort at creating a mutual fund devoted to Build America Bonds.