NXQ News and Press, Nuveen Select Tax Free Income Portfolio II From 08/15/19

By Cooper J Howard Given all the municipal bonds to choose from, how do you decide which ones should make up the core of your portfolio? With $3.6 trillion of muni debt outstanding 1 spread among roughly 35,000 to 40,000, 2 the choice may seem daunting, but we'll help you break it down. ...

Introduction Actively managed funds have been a significant part of our history going back to our start in 1975. In fact, our first 11 mutual funds were actively managed. The numbers tell the story of how we've become one of the largest managers of actively managed funds in the worl...

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Municipal bonds have seen record flows in 2019. Martin talks to head of BlackRock's municipal strategy about some of the reasons why. Martin: Sean, first set the stage for us. Munis have been on a tear this year. What's behind it? Sean: I would say the most obvious driver has been a ...

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By Patricia Healy, CFA The positive trend of upgrades to downgrades continues. S&P reported on May 8th that upgrades outpaced downgrades by 2.39 to 1 in Q1 2019, which compares to 2.09 to 1 for all of 2018. In our monitoring of rating agencies' actions, this trend appears to have conti...

By Cooper J Howard When you buy a municipal bond, you're making a loan to a state or local government, for which it promises to pay you back an amount at some date in the future - potentially as long as 30 years in the future. How do you know if the municipality will be able to make good...

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By John R. Mousseau, CFA The muni bond market has been on a tear so far this year. Not only have yields dropped, but they have dropped relative to US Treasuries across the board. The chart below shows where we are now and where we were at the start of the year. The big squeeze has been...

By Cooper J Howard The municipal bond market is off to its hottest start in five years, led by the lower-rated segments of the muni market. It may be tempting to chase returns, but we suggest that investors instead take a cautious approach and focus on higher-rated issuers during the secon...