Municipal Bond News

Market News Commentary - From The Desk of David Loesch 04.23.2020

Submitted by Tax Free Municipal Bonds/Fixed Income Specialists/DRL Group on April 23rd, 2020

Comments from Mitch McConnell indicating that he supports bankruptcy for states, shook the market yesterday, and will most likely push markets lower for State GO's. This comment was geared around not wanting to bail states out for "past" mistakes (like pension funding issues). I believe that McConnell overstepped his boundaries by making this statement.

Submitted by Tax Free Municipal Bonds/Fixed Income Specialists/DRL Group on April 15th, 2020

The FED’s loans to municipalities will only be available for cities with more than 1MM residents and counties with more than 2MM. These municipalities will be able to take out loans from the Central Bank to cover short term deficits. Cities that surprisingly will not qualify are Baltimore, Atlanta, and Detroit, to name a few.

Submitted by Tax Free Municipal Bonds/Fixed Income Specialists/DRL Group on April 8th, 2020

Democrats push for the FED to buy low rated MUNI debt to ease the strain on the MUNI markets. The past Treasury bill allowed them to buy MUNI bonds by putting a "bid" into the marketplace to add stability to our market.

Submitted by Tax Free Municipal Bonds/Fixed Income Specialists/DRL Group on April 2nd, 2020

As we know, the record selling from funds forced a considerable downturn in pricing in MUNI bonds over the last four weeks. We started to see a recovery last week after the 2.1 trillion stimulus package, however on Wednesday, yields surged again, and IDC was marked down ~55bbps. This jump comes after individuals pulled another record amount from MUNI funds in the last two wee

Submitted by Tax Free Municipal Bonds/Fixed Income Specialists/DRL Group on March 26th, 2020

As we expected, the Senate approved the rescue plan last night. This historic 2 trillion plan obviously will be produced to respond to the crises caused but he coronavirus. I was pleased to see the massive legislation passed on a 96-0 vote just before midnight last night after three days of intense negotiations between Republicans and Democrats.
This package will in

Submitted by Tax Free Municipal Bonds/Fixed Income Specialists/DRL Group on March 19th, 2020

With spreads widening and the MMD benchmark shooting through the roof, many new issues have been canceled; this will help in the near term for supply. Many municipal bond issues that were "teed" up to be called based on "old" pending refundings, will no longer be called. The best commodity right now in our markets is time, there is a ton of uncertainty, wh

Submitted by Tax Free Municipal Bonds/Fixed Income Specialists/DRL Group on March 4th, 2020

With Biden's success on Super Tuesday, the markets feel better with Warren out, and Sanders seeming to be too radical for the US population. Of course, this is politics, and anything can happen, but as it stands now, it is looking like a "traditional" debate setting up with Biden verse Trump. The markets will like this matchup.

Submitted by Tax Free Municipal Bonds/Fixed Income Specialists/DRL Group on February 27th, 2020

Fund flows continue to be strong, with overall MUNI's at all-time lows on yields, and it is hard to "swallow" where these prices are now; however, retail is looking at this as "what are my options?" Many buyers are very skittish about the equity markets, along with the global impact of various items such as Coronavirus, elections and the overall rates of for

Submitted by Tax Free Municipal Bonds/Fixed Income Specialists/DRL Group on February 20th, 2020

With the 10T hovering around the 1.56% range, most accounts and Funds believe that it will continue to move down in yield, as I do as well. With the overall uncertainty of the markets along with the presidential election coming up, I think the bond market will show positive returns through the year at least until October.

Submitted by Tax Free Municipal Bonds/Fixed Income Specialists/DRL Group on February 5th, 2020

CITI lead the street in underwriting paper last month as the value of deals rose 28% versus a year ago. State and local conferments sold 30.7B of bonds in January versus 24.1B a year ago. We have said that the calendar is light in February, and it continues to be; this should continue to push pricing up based on secondary trades.
The most significant sales this week