Investments

Enviva's bankruptcy is the latest Chapter 11 bankruptcy where green private activity bonds are restructured to near zero.

While municipals have outperformed USTs on the whole in 2024, they will close December with losses. How taxables perform in early 2025 coupled with macroeconomic and Washington policy uncertainty have municipal market participants on edge for what lies ahead.

The debate over the debt limit has exposed rifts among Republicans, who will take full control of Congress on Friday.

The muni market saw $507.585 billion of debt issued in 2024, up 31.8% from $385.061 in 2023. This surpasses the previous record of $484.601 billion in 2020 by more than $20 billion, per LSEG data.

Cuyahoga County and Cleveland will each pay $20 million to fund capital repairs at the venues that host Cleveland Cavaliers basketball and Guardians baseball.

The outage began at 5:30 a.m., leaving about 1.3 million of Puerto Rico's 1.4 million customers in the dark, according to Luma Energy, the private company that operates the system. Crews have begun restoring electricity in some areas, but it may take 24 to 48 hours to fully resume service, officials said.

Prolific debt issuance by Texas school districts, state issuers, and others drove muni volume to a state record in 2024, easily surpassing 2023's $59 billion.

Both IG and HY indices will likely end this year richer versus USTs and their benchmarks, "leaving very little cushion to absorb rate volatility," said Barclays strategist Mikhail Foux.

The resolution marks the end of a yearslong lawsuit.

"It's an unfortunate part of doing business," said an investor.

San Francisco's "tepid" recovery from the pandemic was cited by Fitch.

The public finance community remembers President Jimmy Carter's pivotal roles in the near bankruptcy of New York City, deregulation of the transportation industry, and his contributions to state and local governments.

The $33 billion funding gap in the authority's five-year capital plan is too big, the Senate majority leader and Assembly speaker said in a rejection letter.

President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House promises sweeping tax changes that could impact the aspects of the tax-exempt bond market.

While Friday's muni session was muted, the damage of a volatile UST market, paired with low new-issue supply and year-end positioning, has weighed on the asset class in December.

A decline in debt service coverage drove S&P's four-notch downgrade for Salinas, California, sewer revenue debt, which it placed on CreditWatch negative.

The new Congress will have a full plate including deciding the fate of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and Internal Revenue Service funding in a legislature that's already showing cracks of disagreement.

Kotek has spent the past month working on a very busy agenda involving housing, fires, transportation and construction labor agreements.

High-yield funds saw outflows of $413.6 million compared to the previous week's outflows of $71 million.

The Federal Open Market Committee cut the fed funds target again in December but signaled fewer cuts in 2025. There was some dissent. The markets are watching to see if the Federal Reserve pauses its easing cycle in January. Brian Rehling, head of global fixed-income strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, recaps and parses the previous day's FOMC meeting and Fed Chair Jerome Powell's press conference.