Markets

With the wreckage of 2008 in the rearview mirror, issuers will start boosting the supply of muni debt this week as investors continue their flight to quality.

Nearly all The Bond Buyer's weekly yield indexes declined again during the past week as a year-end rally continued to push up prices for municipal bonds, particularly high-quality debt.

The Bond Buyer's weekly yield indexes declined last week, as tax-exempts firmed in each of the abbreviated week's sessions in advance of the Christmas holiday.

Weekly reporting municipal bond mutual funds had a net outflow of $993 million during the period ending Dec. 17, AMG Data Services reported.

With the Christmas holiday arriving later this week, a year-end lull has settled over the muni market that is likely to last at least until the second week of January as the market puts what has become one of the most eventful and tumultuous years behind it.

As 2008 begins to wind down, holiday-minded investors withdrew $2.94 billion from tax-free money market funds for the week ending Dec. 15, according to the Money Fund, a service of iMoneyNet.com of Westborough, Mass.

After several weeks of continuously rising yields, the municipal market rebounded in a dramatic way this week, as nearly all The Bond Buyer's weekly yield indexes showed sizeable declines.

Top executives at Vanguard Group expect robust growth in 2009 from its target-date and exchange-traded funds, but in this economy analysts are skeptical.

Yeshiva University's tax-exempt bonds have been hammered this week as the private, nonprofit university acknowledged potential losses in an investment scheme and a shrinking endowment.

Most executives wouldn't consider themselves "fortunate" if they took over one of the largest fund companies weeks before an historic market collapse.