Weekly Muni Commentary
May 5th, 2025 | Q2
Daily Avg. Offering Line Items
Daily Avg. Notional Offered
CUSIPs Offered on TWD
Dealers Offering on TWD
Buy/Sell Ratio Trend
Bid Wanted Flow
Have a great week!
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Happy Monday!
Municipals were little changed Friday, outperforming US Treasuries as a stronger-than-expected jobs report fired up the equity market. Muni yields were cut up to 3bps depending on where you looked on the scale. UST yields rose 6 to 13bps, with the largest gains on the short end of the curve. Last week was rather “uneventful” with MMD-UST outperforming despite another week of robust issuance. “Investors are finally starting to show signs of life, and it feels like we are about to turn a corner: despite heavy issuance, most deals have been well-received, and even fund flows have moved back into positive territory” as mentioned by Mikhail Foux in The Bond Buyer. A stronger-than-expected employment report will snip bond yields and keep the Fed from cutting rates before June. Muni fund flows finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel last week. Investors poured in a hefty $1.567 billion, marking the largest inflow since January. High-yield muni funds weren’t left behind, attracting $234 million in inflows.
The Primary Market will bring $8.566 billion in new issuance for the week, with $6.891 billion of negotiated deals and $1.675 billion of competitive deals on tap. Yale University leads the negotiated calendar with an $850 million deal in 2 issues, followed by the Louisiana Public Facilities Authority with a $567 million deal. The competitive calendar is led by Fulton County, Georgia, with $275 million of general fund tax anticipation notes. Other deals include The Ontario Public Financing Authority ($237MM), Indianapolis Local Public Improvement Bond Bank bonds ($262MM) and The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, which plans to roll out $187 million in residential mortgage revenue and refunding bonds. These bonds aim to support affordable housing initiatives across the Lone Star State.
Tradeweb Direct posted another strong week, with robust BWIC and market order activity from our Retail, Dealer and Institutional client base. Secondary trading momentum continued to build, with increases in both trade count and volume. Notional BWIC volume rose across asset classes, reflecting heightened engagement. Investors actively tapped into our inventory of over 100,000+ offerings in search of relative value and liquidity. Muni Bid/Ask spreads decreased for the second week in a row, after 10+ weeks of increasing. Buyside to buyside trades on platform trended at 40% last week from platform offerings. Buyside to buyside trades off of BWICS trended at 15%. Buy/sell ratios were 3.1 for Retail, 0.9 for Dealer and 1.3 for Institutional clients. Have a great week!
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Proportion of muni buys vs. sells by client type on the TWD platform.
For the avoidance of doubt, a ratio < 1 indicates net selling activity.
Relative number of bid wanted requests sent to the TWD platform by client type, indexed to the first month in the time series.
Number of municipal inventory line items available on the TWD platform daily by liquidity provider type.
Municipal notional (000s) offered on the TWD platform daily by liquidity provider type.
Number of unique municipal CUSIPs offered daily on the TWD platform daily.
Number of unique liquidity providers offering municipals daily.
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