Municipal New Issuance: Last week, the negotiated calendar totaled to roughly $8.4 billion for the week with the largest deal being the $1 billion California Community Choice Financing Authority Clean Energy Project Revenue Bonds issuance. The second largest deal of last week was the $660 million Maryland Economic Development Corporation taxable issue for Prince George’s County Public Schools. AmeriVet participated in the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority issuance as a Selling-Group-Gember which sold $690 million. The City of Chicago, which postponed their issue from the previous week, issued $646 million. Additionally, Erlanger Health Tennessee Hospital returned to the market after postponing their deal by one week by issuing $316 million. It is important to note that both issuers delayed their pricings due to the market volatilely from last week. AmeriVet participated in one other deal this past week as Selling-Group-Gember for the $147 million Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development Residential Revenue Bonds issuance which consisted of tax-exempt and taxable bonds.

Municipal Secondary Trading: Last week, secondary trading totaled to approximately $38.14 billion with 56% of trades being dealer sells. According to Bloomberg, clients’ bids-wanted was just over $4.98 billion compared to the prior week’s bids-wanted of $5.5 billion.

Municipal Spreads: After a week of rising yields, this past week we saw munis fall slightly with 10-year notes falling by 1.5 basis points to end the week at 2.66%. Although we did see yields fall this past week, we did see munis cheapen compared to Treasuries as the 10-year muni-to-Treasury ratio is now yielding 68.54%, compared to the prior week when the ratio was at 67.95%. The muni curve did steepen slightly by .4 basis points to 96 basis points.

According to LSEG Lipper Fund Flows data, muni bond funds saw investors add approximately $529 million which follows the prior weeks inflow of $671 million. This marks the seventh straight weeks of inflows for muni funds. We did see high yield funds see an inflow of $230.6 million.

After a week of rising yields and volatility, we did see muni yields fall this past week by an average of 1.7 basis points across the curve pushing our month-to-date returns to .69% and our year-to-date returns to 1.20%. With Treasury yields showing signs that the economy is slowing and most of the market pricing in a Fed rate cut in September by 25 basis points, we should expect to see yields continue to fall which will push year-to-date returns higher. With the Fed rate cut almost guaranteed next month, muni investors should start to focus on the longer end to capture that yield.

Municipal Supply: The negotiated calendar for the third week of August will have an expected volume of $9.8 billion with the largest deal being the $1.5 billion City of New York General Obligation issue which AmeriVet will be participating in the Selling-Group. The second largest deal of the week will be the $1.3 billion Hillsborough County Industrial Development Authority for BayCare Health System. The third largest deal of the week will be the $713 million Cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas for Dallas Fort Worth International Airport which will consist of Joint Revenue Refunding and Improvement Bonds. We should expect to see municipal supply slow down after this week as we head into the final week of summer and the Labor Day holiday.