Primary bond market

Investors pulled $7.270 billion from muni bond mutual funds in the week ending May 11, per ICI data, while exchange-traded funds saw $1.756 billion of inflows, the fourth week of record inflows.

St. Louis County will take competitive bids on the $114 million issue Wednesday, amid concerns about rising construction costs for the project.

On the buy-side, weakness, outflows, supply issues, and poor liquidity are making life challenging for municipal bond investors. The same could be said for issuers.

Deep-in-the-red municipal returns are not helping assuage investor concerns, creating a negative feedback loop that has yet to see a pause.

Assuming the taxable and tax-exempt rates are highly correlated (and in fact they are), we can show that the expected cost of a fairly priced callable bond exceeds that of an optionless bond.

Last year the university's investment portfolio grew by 47%, a factor contributing to the university's triple-A ratings.

Despite compelling yields and ratios, buyers continue to be selective. Even if rates stabilize, municipal investors will likely be cautious for some time, waiting for fund outflows to abate, strategists said.

Fitch Ratings revised its outlook on the city's AA-minus rating to positive ahead of a $1.08 billion general obligation bond sale.

The new relationship allows RIAs to access BondLink's hosted investor relations pages without having to leave InspereX's BondNav platform.

Investors pulled more from municipal bond mutual funds in the latest week, with Refinitiv Lipper reporting $2.446 billion of outflows, though that was down from $2.669 billion of outflows in the previous week.