Buy side

The unpredictable nature of legislating leads most to holding off on disclosure changes until a bill becomes a law.

The Trump administration singled out the Las Vegas-Los Angeles bullet train for praise Thursday, the same day the deal priced.

The bonds are to be sold competitively in April.

KBRA raised the airport's outlook to positive last week, citing its improving financial profile and very strong traffic.

Women in Public Finance has announced the 2025 members of its board of directors and plans to expand its offerings as it nears its 30th anniversary.

An investor-driven selloff followed the Los Angeles wildfires. ICE Data Services experts join to discuss the reaction, credit impact and growing role of climate risk data.

Portfolio managers seem more sanguine about threats to the tax exemption from Congress.

BlackRock's move comes as money continues to flow out of muni mutual funds into ETFs and SMAs.

Munis continue to outpace USTs as ratios on the front end continue to richen relative to USTs, Jason Wong said.

"Our job is to take that volatility, figure out what's noise, figure out what's reality, and lean into the opportunities as we see them," said Alex Petrone, director of fixed income at Rockefeller Asset Management.

Muni yields were bumped one to eight basis points, depending on the scale, while UST yields fell three to 10 basis points, with the greatest gains out long.

Tax exemption concerns — though an elimination is unlikely — and the loss of federal stimulus will "most assuredly pull forward delayed issuance, with the first half of 2025 volume to exceed second half volume," said James Welch, a municipal portfolio manager at Principal Asset Management.

The Fed meets this week, but the probability of another cut at Wednesday's meeting seems low amid elevated inflation and growth data, said Matt Fabian, a partner at Municipal Market Analytics.

Tech stocks suffered on "worries that Beijing is becoming increasingly competitive in the high-stakes artificial intelligence race," said José Torres, senior economist at Interactive Brokers.

The municipal bond market's initial negative reaction to this month's Southern California wildfires has eased, with secondary spreads starting to tighten.

Investors added $2.028 billion to municipal bond mutual funds in the week ending Wednesday, following $251.7 million of outflows the prior week, according to LSEG Lipper data.

Issuance was led by a $2 billion retail pricing from the University of California in the negotiated market and a $1.2 billion competitive deal from Washington.

There are eight municipal bond interval funds, three of which launched last year, promising fewer liquidity constraints and the potential for higher returns.

Underperforming since the calendar turned, "munis have continued to cheapen over the past three weeks as Treasury returns are about flat for the year while munis are down 0.31%," said Jason Wong, vice president of municipals at AmeriVet Securities.

Municipals are underperforming USTs month-to-date, with the Bloomberg Municipal Index showing losses of 1.02% versus 0.92% for USTs as of Tuesday, but both are outperforming losses in corporates that are seeing 1.23% losses in January.