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The 2022 midterm Congressional elections are finally over. So, if you are a bond market professional, what does this mean and why should you care? Elections do have consequences. Political shifts lead to policy changes that not only affect real people, but can affect various sectors of the business community, financial markets, state and local governments and, most particularly, the highly regulated financial services industry.

A BDA podcast with the GFOA’s Emily Brock on the fall elections, municipal bond provisions on Capitol Hill, what to expect in 2023 and the strong working relationship between GFOA and BDA.

Web3 and blockchain may help usher in an economic revolution based on openness, transparency, and trust that increases productivity and boosts growth. We believe blockchain related technology will progressively enhance the issuance and trading of financial securities not only in the larger sphere of financial services, but also within the U.S. public finance eco-system.

On November 7, 2022, the MSRB issued two long-awaited compliance resources for municipal underwriters and municipal advisors. The resources are in response to the MSRB’s October 5, 2021 “Request for Comment on Draft Compliance Resources for Dealers and Municipal Advisors Concerning New Issue Pricing.”

2022 was either a year to forget or a year to remember for a very long time, depending on your perspective. On one side, investors would want to erase from their memory this year’s historically poor market performance, the weakest in decades. Institutional investors would bemoan the massive fund outflows all year long. On the flip side, research analysts may look back on the year as the best credit environment for municipals in…well, decades.

To put it mildly, 2022 has evolved with a number of surprises for MBS market participants. The view of the Fed and its actions changed course dramatically and that caused some record-breaking results in fixed income, in general, and within the MBS market, specifically. After a very interesting review of what transpired last year, this article will move quickly into a study of the current demand side of the market. It will then prescribe some strategies for the mortgage book in light of an historically inverted yield curve and still-busy FOMC.