Buy side

Hurricane Sandy left major challenges for many municipal bond firms after the Financial District of Manhattan was hammered hard by the storm.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback last week endorsed legislation that would require local governments to lower their property tax rates automatically when assessed valuations increase.

The scheduled approach of Hurricane Sandy has cast a shadow over the municipal bond calendar for the week. At press time, many municipal bond issuers scheduled to price deals on Tuesday said they would go through with Tuesday's scheduled deals.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association said Sunday afternoon it expected U.S. bond markets to be open Monday.

A proposed merger between two large nonprofit healthcare systems is a credit positive for the nonprofit healthcare sector, Moody's Investors Service says.

An association representing safety-net hospitals is lobbying Congress to restore cuts that are built into the new federal health care law.

Industrial development revenue bonds have shown the best total return of all municipal bond sectors so far this year.

In the third quarter 79% of Moody's Investors Service's ratings actions were downgrades.

Investors poured $666 million into weekly reporting municipal bond mutual funds this past week, marking a 28th straight week of inflows.

Neither primary volume nor moderately volatile Treasuries did much to upset the municipal market's steady mien this week. Despite the modest backup in most rates among munis and Treasuries on the week, muni bond indexes held their levels.

Tax-exempt money market funds continued to lose cash for a second week in a row as total net assets decreased by $679 million to $266.74 billion in the week ended Oct. 22, according to The Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

Moody's said the ongoing wave of mergers sweeping the non-profit health care sector led to an uptick in upgrades during the third quarter and could reverse earlier expectations that downgrades would outpace upgrades for the full year.

The municipal market can expect another middling week of new issuance. Estimates hold that anticipated volume for the week should reach $7.64 billion.

Standard & Poor's downgraded local and state governments more than it upgraded them in the third quarter 2012, but did the opposite with public utilities.

Municipal bond mutual funds saw inflows for the 27th consecutive week. Funds that report their flows weekly recorded inflows of $621 million for the week ended Oct. 17.

As a veteran with 26 years of experience in munis, Guggenheim Partners' Jim Pass talks about investment strategy, political risk, and what he's seeing in the market.

The municipal bond market adopted a slightly weaker tone this week. Muni indexes mostly followed tax-exempt and Treasury yields higher.

Two weeks of gains among tax-exempt money market funds were washed away this week as $2.49 billion escaped and total net assets decreased to $267.42 billion in the week ended Oct. 15, according to The Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

BondDesk Group LLC gave its chairman Howard Edelstein the added role of chief executive officer today.

Natixis Global Asset Management, S.A. today acquired fixed-income asset manager McDonnell Investment Management, LLC.