MSRB Publishes Fact Book of Municipal Market Data
The MSRB published its annual Fact Book, an online sourcebook that analyzes trading data, continuing disclosure documents and other statistics from the municipal bond market. The new edition provides monthly, quarterly and yearly aggregate market information from 2010 to 2014, and covers different types of municipal issues, trades and interest rate resets.
Highlights from the Fact Book include the following:
- a decrease of 16 percent in the number of municipal securities trades in 2014 as compared to the previous year, while submissions of continuing disclosures increased by nearly 19 percent in 2014;
- par volume traded for municipal securities reached $2.77 trillion in 2014, which was the lowest volume in over a decade, a decrease of 11 percent over 2013, and nearly 60 percent lower than the peak of $6.69 trillion traded in 2007;
- at 8.91 million, the total number of trades in 2014 was 16 percent lower than in 2013 and reached the lowest level since 2006, when 8.47 million trades were executed;
- nearly 11,000 annual and audited disclosures were submitted in December 2014, the most in a single month since the MSRB became the official repository for continuing disclosures; and
- the number of interest rate resets for variable rate demand obligations and auction rate securities decreased by 12 and 23 percent, respectively.