April 1, 2019 — Numerous major metropolitan cities have experienced an economic boom over the past decade as the technology, energy, health care, and financial industries have flourished.

March 18, 2019 — Due to an extremely strong technical environment, municipal yields have experienced a significant decline from the highs of 2018.

March 7, 2019 — Due in part to ongoing fiscal challenges, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) bonds are currently trading at attractive levels.

February 14, 2019 — Timing is everything. For a municipal bond investor, annual seasonal trends can provide great entry and exit points, if executed properly.

February 8, 2019 — With investor demand focused on the front end of the yield curve, longer maturities have been neglected, leading to a divergence from Treasury yield movements.

February 1, 2019 — The Higher Education sector represents one of the safer areas of the municipal market due to a national priority placed on advanced education, a large pool of applicants across multiple academic disciplines, and modest-to-significant endowment funds to provide credit support, to name a few.

January 8, 2019 — Both classic and modern literature have countless stories of seemingly outmatched opponents finding a way to persevere and even prevail, despite the odds.

September 30, 2007 — Traditionally, the shape of the Treasury yield curve has a positive slope; longer dated securities offer higher yields than shorter dated maturities. In normal market environments, this relationship applies to all yield curves such as the mortgage and corporate markets, where the yield spread over Treasuries increases for longer maturities. The main reason for higher yield or spread is to compensate the investor for the added risk of inflation and/or credit risk associated with the issuer. However, there have been times when the slope of the yield or credit curve has become flat or inverted. Typically, a negative yield curve (short rates higher than long rates) has been a precursor to an economic recession or slowdown. In this environment, a tight monetary policy and a flight to quality are a result of a projected slowdown in growth and inflation leading investors to accept a lower yield for longer dated securities. In contrast, the Municipal yield curve has been able to maintain a positive slope over time, in spite of the shifting shape of the Treasury yield curve.

June 1, 2006 — Over the past 24 months, municipal bonds have had a stellar run relative to other asset classes on an after-tax and risk adjusted basis. In addition to the municipal market’s overall return, the tobacco obligation bond sector has experienced double digit returns, while other sectors have realized comparatively lower returns. This extraordinary performance, driven primarily by event risk, had a significant impact on the Lehman Municipal Long Bond Maturity Index’s return. In this short report, we examine the recent historical effects of tobacco obligation bonds on the Lehman Broad Municipal Index