Municipal New Issuance: Last week’s negotiated calendar totaled to just over $7.6 billion. Although it was a sizable calendar, over half of the issuance was from just three issuances. The largest deal of the week was the $2.6 billion State of California which AmeriVet was part of the Selling-Group. The second largest deal of the week was the $1.4 billion Main Street Natural Gas, followed by the $1 billion New York and New Jersey Port Authority issuance. AmeriVet participated on one other issue this past week which was the $29 million Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development as a Selling-Group-Member.

Municipal Secondary Trading: With only four trading days this week due the Labor Day holiday, secondary trading totaled to just over $29.3 billion for the week with 54% of trades being dealer sells. According to Bloomberg, clients put up roughly $5.3 billion up for the bid with four days having over $1 billion of bids-wanted.

Municipal Spreads: For the first week of September, muni yields rose with yields on 10-year notes rising by 3.8 basis points to 2.91%. Although muni yields did rise, they were still able to outperform Treasuries as 10-year munis are now yielding 68.31%, compared to the prior week when the ratio was at 68.70%. We did see the muni curve steepen this past week by 2.9 basis points to 77 basis points.

According to Refinitiv Lipper US Fund Flows data, investors pulled roughly $798 million from muni bond funds this past week compared to an inflow of $407 million from the previous week.

Munis have had a slow start to the month of September with munis being down roughly .25% for the first week of September bringing year-to-date returns to 1.34%. With September being a historically hard for munis, this comes to no surprise as the last positive return came back in 2015. With the muni markets continuing to see volatility and munis continuing to be expensive, it’s starting to get difficult to have a positive tone regarding the markets until we start to see ratios come back to normal levels.

Municipal Supply: The Negotiated calendar will have an expected volume of roughly $4.45 billion for the week with the largest deals being the $696 million Ohio State University followed by the $632 million Central Plains Energy Project. AmeriVet will be in one issue this week which will be the $60 million Minnesota Housing Finance Agency issuance as a Selling-Group-Member.