Markets

With underwriters and investors still buzzing about last week's historic Build America Bond blitz in California, the municipal market is gearing up for the arrival of another significant slate - highlighted by $2 billion of Florida bonds - that will bring an estimated $6.28 billion in total issuance to the market in the last week of April, according to Ipreo and The Bond Buyer.

Tender-option bond programs last year lost a lot of money on a controversial premise: that long-term municipal bond yields are fundamentally and inefficiently too high.

Tax-exempt money market funds fell by $6.96 billion to end the week of April 20 with $474.51 billion in total assets, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

The Bond Buyer’s weekly yield indexes declined this week on the back of a surge of Build America Bonds in the primary market, including more than $5 billion of the new securities from California.

When he decided to retire as team leader of the municipal bond group at OppenheimerFunds Inc. nearly four years ago, Ronald H. Fielding never expected the transition phase to last so long.

Cash influxes into municipal bond mutual funds continued last week as fund assets gained steadily.

Call it a bond bonanza.

The Bond Buyer’s weekly yield indexes declined as the municipal market firmed up in nearly all sessions due to strong retail demand and the first two deals containing Build America Bonds were priced in the primary market.

Tax-exempt money market funds settled at $481.47 billion in total assets after losing $2.89 billion for the week ending April 13 — two days before the official tax payment deadline on Wednesday and on the heels of a short-lived period of inflows last week, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

To understand why Josh Gonze likes local school district debt in California, one has to blow the dust off the state’s constitution, which was ratified in 1879.