FMB News and Press, First Trust Managed Municipal ETF From 04/12/22

Investors who look to bonds for safety and modest returns just received a brutal lesson in the perils of unexamined optimism. Basic investment doctrine holds that a trend of rising rates creates losses for existing bondholders. Surging inflation in Europe will soon be putting the ...

While the municipal bond market generally follows rate changes in the U.S. Treasury market, it does not move in lockstep. A contributing factor is that the tax exemption is valuable in all rate and tax environments to many types of investors. We believe it is likely that 2022 will...

The first quarter of 2022 is ending in the largest bond market sell-offs since 1994. The Federal Reserve has begun to tighten short-term interest rates with a hike in the Federal funds target rate from 0%–0.25% to 0.25%-0.5%. We are starting to see some signs that inflation...

Municipals posted negative performance in February amid heightened monetary policy and geopolitical uncertainty. Attractive valuations helped munis modestly outperform comparable U.S. Treasuries. The S&P Municipal Bond Index returned -0.51% for the month and -2.89% year-to-date. ...

Emerging Markets are outperforming the rest of the world, due in large part to windfall profits in the commodities-exporting countries of South America and the Middle East. If you want to follow the money, this is a good place to start. Money has been flowing out of tech, consumer dis...

Non-U.S. markets, including EM, DM, and Asia, are outperforming the U.S. markets after underperforming last year. After slightly underperforming growth last year, value is where the money is flowing. With the economy still in growth mode, cyclical stocks should do better than defe...

In January 2022, volatility in the muni bond market picked up as yields saw their largest increase since the first quarter of 2021. Fundamentals in the municipal bond market today remain sound, while technicals — although slightly weaker as of late — look healthy to us. ...

Investors that hold bonds to maturity earn the yield at which they purchased the security, and at maturity, they get paid face value. The US government issues its own currency and can always pay for anything with the Fed’s newly created money. Fixed income investors have go...

It doesn’t matter what inflation measure you prefer — all are much higher than people have been used to over the past few years. We do expect the monthly inflation numbers to moderate over time. Another effect from the president’s bill being on hold is that th...

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is one of several positive drivers for municipal bonds in the new year. The most significant impact of the IIJA for municipal bond investors is likely to be incremental supply of muni bonds. Heading into 2022, the municipal market finds i...