I continue to find worthwhile municipal bonds for clients despite the historically expensive pricing of generic municipal bonds. While treasury securities are at their highest yields (and lowest prices) in over five months, municipal bonds continue their relative pricing superiority.
Packages of municipal bonds, such as mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETF’s), are priced high relative to their historical averages to treasury securities. Such high prices have helped their performance relative to other fixed income securities.
Today, the ten-year AAA municipal yield of 2.74% is but 59% of the 4.64% of the ten-year treasury note (all yields and prices per Bloomberg). As we have talked about recently, if such spread was even 70% (much less of a historical outlier), municipal yields would need to rise about fifty basis points to 3.25%. Lower actual yields mean municipal bond prices are priced higher, thus contributing to positive performance of late.
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