Primary bond market

"Bond market investors are all wishing that April was behind us as they are anxious to hear the Fed's statement at its next FOMC meeting," noted BofA Global Research. "The statement should be no surprise as the market consensus has converged to 'higher for longer' rates.

Inflows returned to muni mutual funds as investors added $200.3 million for the week ending Wednesday after $1.474 billion of outflows, according to LSEG Lipper.

It's a big week for the Fortress-backed train company, which refinanced more than $4 billion of debt and broke ground on its West Coast high-speed line.

"Just like the ATM became an additional transaction channel in the banking industry, I believe distributed ledger technology will provide municipal issuers with a similarly valued tool to sell their bonds," said Rick Coscia, Quincy's Strategic Asset Manager.

The "impressive" investor appetite for tax-exempts has been "holding steady all quarter despite expensive valuations, supply surges and periods of low reinvestment demand," said GW&K Investment Management strategists in a report.

"Bifurcated demand reflects the persistent bid strength from [separately managed accounts] and retail investors, not to mention more accounts marshaling cash and liquidity up front while the Fed perspective evolves," said MMA's Matt Fabian.

The trio have decades of experience in high yield and investment grade portfolios and will launch new high-yield investment strategies and vehicles for Rockefeller.

The new-issue calendar will be a "good test to see if the higher absolute yields can pull buyers off the sidelines or if underwriters need to widen spreads significantly enough to reprice the entire market to clear the deals," according to Birch Creek strategists.

A combination of a "stronger-than-expected economy, higher Treasury rates, robust supply, and rich valuations resulting in choppy markets" have made the trading environment in H124 "quite difficult," according to Barclays.

Friday price talk for the unrated tax-exempt paper was between 11% and 15%.

"Folloing recent yield moves, a generic muni index is now down 1% on the month with no real sub-sector showing much deviation from that result," said Kim Olsan, senior vice president of trading at FHN Financial.

John Fleming is pushing back against a proposal in the state Legislature to change the way the state Bond Commission oversees the issuance of debt by cities, counties and local governments and entities.

Jeffrey Scruggs, Managing Director and Head of Public Sector and Infrastructure Group at Goldman Sachs, sits down with Bond Buyer Executive Editor Lynne Funk on the state of the muni industry.

Despite higher yields, muni to UST ratios remain rich. Ratios look "progressively richer" moving into the five- to 10-year part on the curve, with the 10-year spot "still far more attractive in taxables versus tax-exempts," J.P. Morgan said.

"April has been one of the worst-performing months over the past five years, which we believe warrants continued caution," BlackRock strategists said.

Barclays' Mikhail Foux talks shifting demand, BABs refundings, election effects and what it means for the asset class in a volatile market.

April continues to be "harsh" for munis as the asset class has given up roughly 72 basis points in the first two weeks of the month, said Jason Wong, vice president of municipals at AmeriVet Securities.

"We were originally thinking that we would offer five-, seven- and 10-year maturities, with $500 million in each tranche. But we decided today to just offer 5s and 10s — $500 million of five-year bonds and $1 billion of 10-year bonds," said Ben Watkins, Director of Florida's Bond Division.

New York City Municipal Water Authority returns to the municipal primary after a $1.4 billion deal earlier this year.

In a week marked by inflation and jobs data that made clearer the Federal Reserve will not be cutting rates nearly as much or as many times as some had expected even a week ago, Friday's headlines further complicated the landscape for investors and munis have had little choice but to go along for the ride.