Tag Archives: municipal bond
Laddered Protection
Continuing the theme of rising interest rates and following up from my last blog, “With all the News of Higher Interest Rates, Don’t Forget About Floating-Rate Debt,” bond laddering is a strategy that provides increased income and the ability to adjust the stream of income in a rising-interest-rate environment. The approach is to invest in…
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Rieger Report: A Tale of Two Bond Markets
The U.S. corporate and municipal bond markets seem to be neck and neck in total return performance for the first three quarters of 2017. However, there are distinct characteristics of both of these markets that have played a key role and could cause the performance to vary significantly going forward. The intent of this blog post…
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Rieger Report: Infrastructure Bonds
With the President’s focus on the U.S. infrastructure this coming week it is a good time to look at the existing infrastructure bond markets. Municipal bonds have long played a critical funding role in the U.S. infrastructure sector. The 19,000 tax-exempt municipal bonds tracked in the S&P Municipal Bond Infrastructure Index mainly consist of investment grade bonds…
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Rieger Report: Puerto Rico’s Weight on the Muni Market
Puerto Rico remains a puzzle unsolved. The large amount of Puerto Rico debt continues to weigh on the municipal bond market with the heaviest exposure in the high yield (below investment grade) segment. Puerto Rico municipal bonds have over 27.1% market value weight in the S&P Municipal Bond High Yield Index and represent over $26.7billion in market value of bonds in…
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Rieger Report: Muni Market’s own “Lunar” Calendar
The municipal bond market is a huge and diverse segment of the bond markets. Part of the ‘lore’ of the muni bond market has been that the summer months of the year create a natural increase in demand for municipal bonds. It turns out there is a basis behind this ‘lore’. Using the broadest municipal bond index…
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The Rieger Report: Bonds in 2016?
2015 had been a year of low or no returns for major asset classes. Income asset classes such as preferred stock and municipal bonds did outpace the S&P 500 Index and did so without the volatility but others did not bode as well. What about 2016? Let’s look at the leaders for 2015 first: From a total return perspective…
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Late July Muni Minutes
Long-term bonds have posted solid gains thus far in 2014, with rates holding low longer than most expected. The composition of the municipal bond market is heavily weighted with short duration bonds. The looming sentiment of rising rates and inflation has investors focused on reinvestment risk; however, a supply imbalance systemic of voters’ hindrance for…
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Municipal Bonds: Hooked on Tobacco
The S&P Municipal Bond Tobacco Index has returned 12.79% year to date as the tobacco settlement bond market has recovered from a dismal 2013 return of -8.77%. Yields of these bonds have fallen 99bps during the year to an average of 5.92%. These long duration higher yielding bonds represent just under 15% of the total…
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Getting there – China Municipal Bond Market
China has recently announced some potential changes in its municipal bond market, which will allow the local governments to sell bond on their own credits, as opposed to the majority of local government bonds that are currently issued by the Ministry of Finance. The coverage is targeted to expand to Beijing, Jiangxi, Ningxie and Qingdao, in…
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