Municipal New Issuance: This past week, the negotiated calendar issued just over $5.7 billion, with the largest deal of the week being the $950 million Florida Development Finance Corporation for their Brightline Florida Passenger Rail Expansion Project. The City of New York issued $1.5 billion in tax-exempt bonds and $78 million in taxable bonds, which AmeriVet participated as a Selling Group Member for. AmeriVet also participated in the Selling Group for one other issue, which was the $729 million Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority General Revenue Bonds issue.

Municipal Secondary Trading: Secondary trading volume totaled just over $47.26 billion, with 52% of secondary trading being dealer sells. According to Bloomberg, clients put roughly $6.18 billion up for the bid, a slight increase from the prior week’s total of $6.14 billion. 

Municipal Spreads: For the third week in a row, munis saw bumps across the curve by an average of 3.0 basis points with front end seeing the largest bumps. Yields on 10-year notes bumped by 3.1 basis points to end the week at 3.17%. Despite muni yields falling, munis did underperform Treasuries slightly as the muni-to-Treasury ratio in now yielding 75.81%, compared to 75.47% from the prior week. We did see muni curve flatten by 2.8 basis points to 230 basis points. 

According to LSEG Lipper Global US Fund Flows data, muni bond funds saw inflows to the sum of $1.7 billion, marking the third straight week of inflows. This follows the prior week’s inflow of $973 million.

We are just one week into the month of August and returns for the month are currently at .64%, which have pushed muni returns back into the green with year to date returns of .09%. This is positive news for munis, as July saw negative returns for the first time since 2014. We should see munis turn positive, while supply will start to dwindle in the next couple of weeks as we head into September and the Labor Day holiday. The month of August still has about $10 billion left in principal redemption demand, which should continue to outweigh supply for August.

Municipal Supply: The negotiated calendar for this week will have an expected volume of $9.37 billion with the largest deals of the week being the $1.13 billion Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, followed by the Long Island Power Authority, which will be issuing $750 million. The New Hope Cultural Education Facilities Finance Corporation plans on issuing $600 million for the Children’s Health System of Texas. AmeriVet will be serving as a Co-Manager for the $247 million New York City Health and Hospital Corporation Health System Bonds transaction. AmeriVet will also be serving as a Co-Manager for the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency’s Single Family Housing Revenue Bonds transaction, which will consist of $78 million in taxable bonds and $65 million in tax-exempt bonds.

Have a great week!