Fixed income

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has released a long-range plan to improve transparency in the muni market by collecting a wide range of new information from a variety of sources, integrating that data on the Electronic Municipal Market Access system, and making it available to investors and other market participants in a more user-friendly and searchable format.

Investors continued to steer money into stock mutual funds in February, though with much less enthusiasm. According to statistics released today by the Investment Company Institute, investors placed an estimated $1.04 billion into equity funds during the week ended Wednesday, Feb. 15, less than half the $3.64 billion they poured into the funds a week earlier.

A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration panel ordered Memphis-based Morgan Keegan & Co. to pay a Birmingham investor $1.95 million for misrepresenting that the Jefferson County, Ala., sewer bonds he purchased were safe, liquid and tax-free investments.

A sports agent, whose company represents star clients including Denver quarterback Tim Tebow, won $400,000 in a ruling against brokerage Morgan Keegan & Co., due to personal losses from bad bond investments.

The Government Accountability Office report on muni bond transactions released in January said that retail investors paid an average 2.5% markup when buying $5,000 worth of municipal securities in the secondary market.

Seventeen muni groups are urging members of Congress to reject President Obama's proposal to place a 28% cap on the value of tax-exempt interest, warning it will hurt the market and that its retroactivity will reverse nearly 100 years of legislative history.

President Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget will propose a 28% cap on the value of tax preferences, including tax-exempt interest for municipal bonds, according to knowledgeable sources.

A positive outlook for 2012 is based on budget improvements at the state and local level

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board is urging the Federal Reserve Board, the SEC and other financial regulators to exempt all municipal securities from the Volcker Rule, warning the failure to do so would bifurcate and hurt the municipal market without increasing the soundness of the banking system.

Senior White House economic advisors have told state and local officials that tax-exempt bond interest is “off the table” and will not be part of the administration’s proposed 28% cap on the value of exclusions, deductions and other tax preferences for wealthy taxpayers, sources familiar with the discussions told The Bond Buyer.

Citi Fixed Income Indices and Research Affiliates have come together to develop a new series of investable bond indices based on the Research Affiliates Fundamental Index methodology.

Investors may be wondering where municipal bond yields are headed after they reached 45-year lows last week.

Ratios of municipal to Treasury bond yields over the past three months have shown a degree of volatility that has complicated a standard valuation of tax-exempt debt for investors. Will that trend continue this year?

Muni yields have outperformed those of Treasuries by rallying four to five basis points on the intermediate and long ends of the curve throughout the holiday-shortened week. Meanwhile, equivalent Treasury yields backed up three to four basis points.

When broker-dealers give money to California school bond campaigns, it appears to be money well spent. A review of campaign finance records found a nearly perfect correlation between broker-dealer contributions to California school bond efforts in 2010 and their underwriting subsequent bond sales.

Speculation about widespread municipal credit defaults and bankruptcies sent them running from the tax-exempt market early in the year. Now as 2012 gets under way, mom-and-pop investors are back and looking to glean some of the performance that made the sector shine in the fourth quarter of 2011.

The Internal Revenue Service’s initiative to determine whether municipal bonds are being initially offered at prices that fail to comply with tax requirements has left issuers upset and confused about the definition of issue price and what specific abuses the IRS is looking for.

FINRA has asked the SEC to allow it to assess its muni members quarterly fees based on the par value of their reported transactions to help fund the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, despite protests from issuers and dealers.

A 10-year low of new municipal bond issuance is what was on everyone’s mind in 2011. Last year, only $295 billion of tax-exempt bonds were issued, down almost 32% from 2010 when $433 billion was issued. It was the lowest amount of issuance since 2001.

Beginning Jan. 1, U.S. Savings Bonds will be going digital, saving taxpayers $120 million over the next five years.