Municipals turn mixed at midday as buyers look ahead to new supply

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Municipal bond buyers saw the last of the week’s new issue supply get put away as the market’s gaze turns to next week’s volume. Already on next week's calendar are issues from New York City, which intends to sell about $850 million of general obligation bonds and sales from Minnesota and Michigan, which plan competitive sales of about $619 million and $149 million, respectively.

Primary market
Citigroup received the official award Thursday on the Washington State Convention Center Public Facilities District’s $1 billion of Series 2018 lodging tax bonds and subordinate lodging tax bonds.

The lodging tax bonds are rated Aa3 by Moody’s Investors Service and A-plus by S&P Global Ratings while the subordinate lodging tax bonds are rated A1 by Moody’s and A-minus by S&P.

Thursday’s bond sales
Click here for the convention center deal

Bond Buyer 30-day visible supply at $8.22B
The Bond Buyer's 30-day visible supply calendar decreased $655.8 million to $8.22 billion for Thursday. The total is comprised of $2.96 billion of competitive sales and $5.26 billion of negotiated deals.

Secondary market
Municipal bonds were mostly weaker on Thursday, according to a midday read of the MBIS benchmark scale. Benchmark muni yields fell as much as one basis point in the one- to 10-year maturities and rose as much as one basis point in the 11- to 30-year maturities.

High-grade munis were mostly weaker, with yields calculated on MBIS’ AAA scale falling as much as one basis point in the one- and two-year and seven- to nine-year maturities and rising in the three- to five-year and 10- to 30-year maturities and remaining unchanged in the six-year maturity.

Municipals were steady on Municipal Market Data’s AAA benchmark scale, which showed the yield on the 10-year muni general obligation and the yield on the 30-year muni maturity both remaining unchanged.

Treasury bonds were weaker as stocks traded mixed.

On Wednesday, the 10-year muni-to-Treasury ratio was calculated at 82.6% while the 30-year muni-to-Treasury ratio stood at 97.6%, according to MMD. The muni-to-Treasury ratio compares the yield of tax-exempt municipal bonds with the yield of taxable U.S. Treasury with comparable maturities. If the muni/Treasury ratio is above 100%, munis are yielding more than Treasury; if it is below 100%, munis are yielding less.

Previous session's activity
The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board reported 43,218 trades on Wednesday on volume of $16.92 billion.

ICI: Long-term muni funds saw $613M inflow
Long-term tax-exempt municipal bond funds saw an inflow of $613 million in the week ended July 25, the Investment Company Institute reported.

This followed an inflow of $1.765 billion into the tax-exempt mutual funds in the week ended July 18 and inflows of $1.028 billion, $356 million, $525 million, $742 million, $326 million, $648 million, $661 million, and $185 million in the eight prior weeks.

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Taxable bond funds saw an estimated inflow of $3.826 billion in the latest reporting week, after seeing an inflow of $6.894 billion in the previous week.

ICI said the total estimated inflows to long-term mutual funds and exchange-traded funds were $3.856 billion for the week ended July 25 after inflows of $8.014 billion in the prior week.

Tax-exempt money market funds saw outflows
Tax-exempt money market funds saw outflows of $3.09 billion, lowering total net assets to $131.48 billion in the week ended July 30, according to The Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com. This followed an outflow of $2.97 billion to $134.58 billion in the prior week.

The average, seven-day simple yield for the 201 weekly reporting tax-exempt funds rose to 0.58% from 0.54% the previous week.

The total net assets of the 832 weekly reporting taxable money funds fell $3.67 billion to $2.671 trillion in the week ended July 31, after an inflow of $9.23 billion to $2.675 trillion the week before.

The average, seven-day simple yield for the taxable money funds rose to 1.56% from 1.55% from the prior week.

Overall, the combined total net assets of the 1,033 weekly reporting money funds fell $6.76 billion to $2.803 trillion in the week ended July 31, after inflows of $6.26 billion to $2.810 trillion in the prior week.

Treasury announces auction details
The Treasury Department said Thursday it will auction $51 billion 91-day bills and $45 billion 182-day discount bills Monday.

The 91s settle Aug. 9, and are due Nov. 8, and the 181s settle Aug. 9, and are due Feb. 7, 2019.

Currently, there are $62.001 billion 91-days outstanding and no 182s.

Gary Siegel contributed to this report.

Data appearing in this article from Municipal Bond Information Services, including the MBIS municipal bond index, is available on The Bond Buyer Data Workstation. Click here for a brief tour of the Workstation, or contact Ziad Saba at 212-803-6079 for more information.

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