Munis mostly quiet to close out a stronger week

Munis were relatively quiet on Thursday while equities dropped and Treasuries were flat.

Muni yields were bumped up to two basis points in spots, depending on the scale. This continues the slight turnaround in sentiment the market has seen this week, with muni yields seeing modest bumps each day, said Jeremy Holtz, a portfolio manager at Income Research + Management.

"We'll have to see if that is sustainable, because just with everything going on, there's been a lot of back and forth and a lot of head fakes," he said.

Following a week of outflows from muni mutual funds, inflows returned. With the "inflow engine humming again," then that could balance out supply and weaker, lower cash be put to work and maturities and coupons," Holtz said.

New-issue calendar
Next week's new-issue calendar is an estimated $5.061 billion, with $3.736 billion of negotiated deals on tap and $1.324 billion of competitives.

The Nashville & Davidson County Metropolitan Government Health and Educational Facilities Board, Tennessee, leads the negotiated calendar with $1.258 billion of revenue bonds.

The competitive calendar is led by California with $740.385 million of taxable various purpose GOs in two series.

Fund flows
Investors added $923.2 million to municipal bond mutual funds in the week ended Wednesday, following $544.4 million of outflows the prior week, according to LSEG Lipper data.

High-yield funds saw outflows of $173.1 million compared to outflows of $556.7 million the previous week.

The SIFMA Swap Index was at 2.37% on Wednesday compared to the previous week's 2.42%.