Secondary bond market

The calendar is led by several high-profile deals, including $2.7 billion of GOs from California, $1.5 billion from New York City and $1.1 billion from Washington. High-yield gets another dose of unrated project finance debt from Miami Worldcenter Project tax increment revenue bonds. The Bond Buyer 30-day visible supply sits at $12.06 billion.

Hallam will handle high-yield muni sales and trading, focusing on large institutional accounts at the firm.

LSEG Lipper reported fund inflows of $63.8 million for the week ending Wednesday following $300.5 million of inflows the prior week. High-yield saw its 11th consecutive week of inflows at $180.4 million, down from $278.6 million the week prior.

The extraordinary redemptions being used to call Build America Bonds "are based on a creative but flawed legal argument driven by the current change in interest rates," said Kramer Levin partner Amy Caton.

Citi's exit comes amid the larger trend of broker-dealers downsizing balance sheets, which can hurt secondary market liquidity, particularly in times of stress. Other market players are coming into the fold.

"The balance of March may continue to be better-than-expected, particularly given existing demand and decent reinvestment needs over the next 30 days," according to Oppenheimer's Jeff Lipton.

Despite several larger deals entering the primary, the vast amount of cash on hand has not allowed munis to cheapen amid UST volatility and ultra-rich ratios

The New York MTA has not sold fixed-rate transportation revenue bonds since February 2021. The first maturity of that deal (4% 11/15/44) priced at +81 and was evaluated at +78 as of Wednesday by BVAL, according to CreditSights strategists. The same maturity but with a 5% coupon was priced at +59 to BVAL.

Marc Livolsi was promoted to lead U.S. Public Finance New Issue Marketing and Business Development, and Evan Boulukos will lead Assured's Secondary Markets desk, both of whom will report to Chris Chafizadeh, senior managing director and co-head of Public Finance.

"While rate volatility returned this week, should the market return to range-bound levels for a protracted period of time, investors might want to add exposure to sectors that provide the most value and have underperformed thus far," Barclays said.