Buy side

Nearly all The Bond Buyer's weekly yield indexes rose this week as weakness inside of 20 years on the municipal yield curve persisted through Wednesday, before subsiding yesterday.

Tax-exempt money market funds recouped some of the outflows they suffered for the week ending April 5, as total assets rose $2.103 billion to $369.44 billion, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch will pay New Jersey $4.87 million and repurchase auction-rate securities sold to investors in a settlement agreement over alleged misinformation regarding the floating-rate securities.

Mitchell Savader traveled to Philadelphia yesterday to deliver a reality check. Numerous newspapers and magazines, including Barron's and the New York Times, have run eye-popping headlines in the past few weeks.

Last week, investors did something they have not done in well more than a year: withdrew more money from municipal bond mutual funds than they put in.

The jury is still out among investors on how the municipal bond market will respond during the transition phase of the recalibration of tens of thousands of muni credits to a global rating scale by Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service.

Fitch Ratings lifted its rating on more than 38,000 municipal bond issues yesterday under a systematic overhaul of the way it assigns grades to the credit quality of state and local governments.

A handful of reasonably sized deals will head to market this week while many municipal participants continue to be on hiatus due to religious and spring break holidays.

In another week of hefty outflows from money market funds, investors withdrew $2.74 billion out of their tax-exempt accounts, leaving behind $367.33 billion in total assets for the week ending March 29, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

State and local governments pulled in their biggest-ever tax haul in the fourth quarter as they leaned on property tax collections to help recoup shortfalls in other types of revenue.

The Bond Buyer’s weekly yield indexes were mixed this week, as the short end of the municipal yield curve cheapened, but the long end remained unchanged to slightly firmer.

State Street Global Advisors hired Nuveen Investments to manage a suite of five municipal bond exchange-traded funds — plus a series of new funds the company expects to launch in the coming months.

When Build America Bonds hit the market a year ago, Eaton Vance did not have to do much homework before launching its mutual fund devoted to the new product.

Even as the market for Build America Bonds has evolved over the past 12 months, underwriters, bankers, and analysts are still schooling investors and issuers about the taxable securities using various approaches.

If anyone understands the value of getting people’s attention, it’s Jim Lebenthal.

The pace of cash flowing into municipal bond mutual funds fell off a cliff last week.

Volume will decline sharply this week as the market closes the books on the first quarter.

On the heels of a historic decline in the money market funds overall last week, tax-exempt funds stemmed their own losses to nearly half of last week’s outflows. Approximately $2.03 billion fled the market and total assets closed at $370.07 billion during the week ending March 22, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

Fitch Ratings will raise its credit rating on nearly every state and most cities under an overhaul of its municipal credit-evaluation system next month.

Nearly all of The Bond Buyer’s weekly yield indexes rose this week, as cheapness particularly on the short-end of the curve permeated the market.