Buy side

Municipal bonds’ performance versus Treasuries over the next few months is up to the Federal Reserve.

The stream of cash into municipal bond mutual funds rebounded last week after a month or so of decidedly slowing inflows.

As investors continue to struggle with low absolute yields, issuers in the Northeast and California will dominate most of the primary market with relatively large financings — led by $800 million from the Bay Area Toll Authority — as part of an estimated $10.6 billion of new, long-term volume, according to Ipreo LLC and The Bond Buyer.

Water utility bonds might not be as safe as everyone thinks.

Municipal bonds yields weakened a touch during the week as a slug of new debt came to market at a time of low nominal yields.

Outflows among tax-exempt money market funds rose to $2.31 billion in the week ending Oct. 18, causing total net assets to recede to $327.99 billion, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

The hassles associated with Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcies will suppress the number of filings, despite municipal revenues still being well below pre-recession levels, ­experts say.

The flow of cash washing into the municipal bond mutual fund industry continues to slow down, to what one important measure counts as the slowest pace since January 2009.

Volume will continue to level off from the highs of two weeks ago as $7.97 billion of municipal debt gets ready to sell this week, according to Ipreo LLC and The Bond Buyer.

Most municipal analysts bristle at the claim that California will “become the next Greece.”

Nearly all The Bond Buyer’s yield indexes declined slightly during this holiday-shortened week amid moderate secondary trading activity and rising Treasury yields.

After a short-lived period of inflows last week, tax-exempt money market funds experienced $1.81 billion of outflows and settled at $330.29 billion in total net assets for the week ending Oct. 11, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

The municipal floating-rate note may have begun to take off at precisely the wrong time.

More than half of the floating-rate notes sold this year have been from state-run student loan securitization pools, nearly all with Libor as the reference rate and most underwritten by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Early this year, the municipal floating-rate note was fast emerging as a potent tool for local governments to maintain some variable-rate component in their debt profiles.

The municipal bond mutual fund industry shrank last week for the first time since June as investors handed over the smallest slug of new money in more than three months, with intermediate-term muni bonds absorbing the biggest hit.

After the deluge of supply last week, the municipal market will see a noticeable lull in new-issue activity this week.

The Bond Buyer's weekly yield indexes were narrowly mixed this week, as fears of a supply-driven sell-off were washed away by two days of gains, spurred by refunding postponements and rallying Treasuries.

Tax-exempt money market funds ended a string of outflows as they swept up $476.9 million of new cash the week ending Oct. 4, boosting total net assets to $332.1 billion, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

The first full week of the fourth quarter gets underway with $13.13 billion of new, long-term volume, which is expected to continue to re-energize a thin and sleepy primary market, according to Ipreo LLC and The Bond Buyer.