Buy side

Investors last week handed municipal bond mutual funds the puniest slug of cash in nine months as the cascade of new money continues to moderate.

UBS Global Asset Management is surrendering one of its municipal bond closed-end funds following a coup by activist shareholders.

Cash hurts.That painful truth is a primary pillar supporting municipal bonds today.

Nearly all The Bond Buyer’s weekly yield indexes declined this week, as the municipal market carried a firmer tone throughout most of the week, despite little day-to-day movement.

In an effort to help educate investors, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board yesterday issued a “fact sheet” containing seven questions they can ask their financial professionals when considering investing in municipal bonds.

Standard & Poor’s downgrade of California last week raises a crucial question: does the Golden State’s debt at some point become no longer appropriate for conservative retail investors?

This week’s largest financings include deals in the health care, transportation, and environmental sectors that are expected to price as part of an estimated $5.44 billion in volume, according to Ipreo LLC and The Bond Buyer.

The Bond Buyer’s weekly yield indexes were flat to slightly lower this week as the primary market took center stage with over $9 billion sold, in the most active week of new issuance so far in the new year.

Matt Dalton is willing to buy the debt of a bankrupt borrower — and he can’t find any for sale at a suitable price.

Only in municipal bonds.Matt Dalton is willing to buy the debt of a bankrupt borrower — and he can’t find any for sale at a suitable price.

Outflows to the tune of $948.2 million caused tax-exempt money market funds to end the week of Jan. 11 with total assets of $401.29 billion, after starting 2010 the previous week with inflows of nearly $3 billion, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

Among the many metamorphoses the advent of taxable Build America Bonds was anticipated to induce in the tax-exempt municipal bond market, one of the most important was the flattening of the yield curve.

Long-term municipal bonds have demonstrated unusual resilience against the market’s walloping of Treasury bonds in the last six weeks.

After breaking every record for garnering new money from investors in 2009, municipal bond mutual funds kicked off 2010 by taking in still more.

Municipal issuers this week will unveil several large deals — anchored by a $900 million Pennsylvania general obligation offering — on the heels of last week’s equally hefty post-holiday slate.

BlackRock Friday threw a new type of product into the mix in the rapidly growing and evolving municipal bond exchange-traded fund industry.

Most of The Bond Buyer’s weekly yield indexes increased this week as municipals came out of the holiday doldrums with losses outweighing gains, but with buyers returning to the market.

Tax-exempt money market funds rang in 2010 with $2.60 billion of inflows and total assets of $402.24 billion for the week ending Jan. 4, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

As if municipal bond closed-end funds needed any more help, the year-end tax selling that customarily plagues the industry every December took the year off in 2009.

In the first week of 2009, nobody had heard of Build America Bonds. In the first week of 2010, they rule the municipal bond market.