Secondary bond market

With municipal yields at exceedingly low absolute levels, the spread tightening between credits also continues.

The pilot program aims to expand its all-to-all Open Trading marketplace by allowing investor clients to select a diversity dealer to intermediate in secondary trading.

The last week of July marks a lighter calendar while August redemptions are huge compared to the expected supply. Investors need to get in line and likely accept lower yields and continued historically low ratios.

Low ratios, low yields and massive demand are leading to a market that is mostly on its own. Refinitiv Lipper reported $1.7 billion of inflows.

The larger new issues and aggressive swings in taxables had investors on guard as triple-A curves were pressured outside 10-years, but the asset class still vastly outperformed UST while ICI reports nearly $3 billion more inflows.

Negotiated deals were repriced to lower yields while competitive deals saw levels coming in through triple-A benchmarks. High-grade benchmarks were little changed.

Municipal triple-A benchmarks were pushed to lower yields by one to three basis points across the curve, with the bigger moves out long, but still vastly underperformed the 10-plus basis point moves in UST.

Supply, however, is still less than the massive amounts of cash on hand. Bond Buyer data shows 30-day visible supply at $12.53 billion.

U.S. Treasuries have been volatile the past five sessions, with municipals largely ignoring the ride. Participants mostly have accepted current rates and ratios as large amounts of cash slosh around a market with strong technicals.

Perform, a portfolio management platform for institutional investors who want to accesses the municipal bond market, will be integrated into ICE Bonds.