Winding down a rough 2022 with higher hopes for 2023

Transcription:

Lynne Funk (00:03):

Hello everyone and welcome to another Bond Buyer podcast. I’m Lynne Funk, Executive Editor at the Bond Buyer, and I’m joined by Bond Buyer Markets reporter, Jessica Lerner. Today we’re going to be talking with Patrick Luby, Senior Market Strategist, Municipal Market Strategist at CreditSights, and John Ceffelio, Senior Research Analyst at CreditSights. Welcome to you both.

John Ceffalio (00:23):

Thanks so much.

Patrick Luby (00:25):

Thanks for having us.

Lynne Funk (00:26):

Great. It’s great to have you. So let’s get right into it. It’s been a year of records in the muni market and none of them are actually really considered to be necessarily positive. Worst returns in four decades. Outflows to the tune of a hundred billion plus. Bond volume disappointing after two record years in 2020 and 2021. But the industry adapts and analysts are seeing some positive momentum to close out the year. And in fact, as we’re recording this on December 7th, the past month and a half munis have been back in the black with November returns coming in the strongest since 1986. And there’s been a pivot back to fixed income and munis in particular after yields have adjusted to these higher levels. But let’s go through this year. Pat, would you want kick us off with an overview of what has been an extremely volatile 2022? What were the biggest challenges in obstacles at the muni market faced this year?

Patrick Luby (01:20):

Thanks. I think the biggest challenge has been coming out of the pandemic era, I think most market participants were in an emotional state having gone through a lot of professional and personal trauma from the pandemic. And so coming into 2022, I think there was probably a little bit more constructive optimism about the market. And so the transition of the market from a benign interest rate environment to a rising rate environment, I think generated a tremendous emotional response on the part of many investors. I think that’s been the big driver of many mutual fund net outflows. But I think it also revealed that a lot of market participants had not been through this kind of market environment before. So there’s this tremendous confluence of events that was new to a lot of market participants. And we have to remember too that the biggest source of demand in the municipal market is now direct and indirect demand from individual investors. Institutional investors are much more opportunistic and a municipal market and not necessarily present to provide demand. So the market fundamentally is simply more reliant on a single class of investors for demand and therefore subject to greater volatility. So the transition from the benign interest rate environment exposed the entire market to much, much greater emotional distress. And I think we’ve seen that in the mutual fund outflows and that affects secondary market liquidity and prices in the market as well. And I think there’s some credit concerns that we’ve experienced this year too,

Lynne Funk (03:12):

And we’re going to get back to quite a bit of what you touched on there. The fund flows for sure. But John would you give us some credit insights here from your seat?

John Ceffalio (03:23):

Yeah, thanks. So first of all I think that municipal credit continued to be strong this year despite the kind of surprising persistence of high inflation and high interest rates. We certainly have seen high inflation help issuers revenues, particularly sales tax revenues. But we’ve seen that to begin to have a negative impact on issuers due to higher labor costs and it’s made it more difficult for them to execute on capital plan. I wanna mention two other things that happened in 2022, perhaps both were surprised is first of all, the Puerto Rico bankruptcy finally ended earlier this year, and we now have about seven and a half billion of Puerto Rico geo bonds trading in the normal municipal market as restructured bonds, which is a big accomplishment. And then second of all, for the first time in it seems like quite a few years, there was no big surprise coming out of Washington, D.C. that impacted the municipal markets.

(04:29)

All the big legislation, the stimulus the infrastructure passed in 2020 ones that was off the table this year. The big bill that passed in DC, the Inflation Reduction Act did not really have a big impact on municipal credit. And then finally the election, which has caused some seismic disruptions in the past this year was more or less a status quo election. The Republicans took the house, the Democrats added a Senate seat, and most of the governor’s seats the big municipal bond states remained in the same party control. So not a lot of change there which perhaps was a surprise compared to previous years.

Lynne Funk (05:13):

Johnny, that’s that’s interesting. Your last points on DC. It’s funny because I didn’t even think in prepping for this to ask about DC and I think you’re so on point there with 2022, at least being a year of relative quiet out of Washington

John Ceffalio (05:30):

<laugh>. Right.

Lynne Funk (05:31):

But we’re going to get more granular on credit in a little bit for sure. I want to ask you about a couple sectors. We want to get into some sector of questions, but Pat, can we, let’s go back to some market questions here. And year to date there have just been these massive outflows from mutual funds and you mentioned this reliance on our market on direct and indirect retail. I guess with these outflows, what sort of impact has this had on market sentiment, particularly retail investors? And a second part of this question is will there be a full return to mutual funds or will other demand components come in?

Patrick Luby (06:14):

A great question and it’s a detailed question

Lynne Funk (06:18):

<laugh>. Sorry about that.

Patrick Luby (06:19):

No, that’s okay. That’s okay. I think a lot of elements of this frequently I get overlooked by the market. Certainly the bottom line impact of the net negative outflows from muni mutual funds has really been twofold. It removes an important source of demand from the market because mutual fund portfolio managers, instead of trying to figure out where they’re going to be putting new money to work and therefore being active in the new issue market, they’ve been trying to raise funds and pay exiting shareholders. So it has removed an important source of demand for long duration paper from the long end of the market, which is why the long end of the yield curve partly has underperformed. But the sale of bonds from portfolios into the secondary market has really pushed prices lower. There’s not as much demand in the secondary market as there is in the primary market.

(07:23)

And so when the mutual funds are selling in the secondary market, it really has a disproportionately negative effect on prices. And then that turns into a cycle in which the redemption of mutual fund shares leads to the sale of bonds, which leads to the downward spiral in prices, which leads to the decline in NAVs, which frightens more municipal mutual fund investors to exit their mutual funds leads. And the cycle repeats itself. It’s been very destructive cycle in the market. What’s overlooked when we talk just about net flows into or out of mutual funds is the gross flows into or out of mutual funds on a one month lag. We get data from ICI about how much new money has gone into mutual funds and how much money has gone out. And of course you subtract one from the other and you get the net flows while the gross mutual fund flows in 2022 have been off the charts through the end of October.

(08:32)

Gross purchases of municipal bond mutual funds total $335 billion. That’s more than the full year gross sales in any of the previous 13 years. The previous calendar year with the largest amount of gross sales was 2020 when gross sales were $308 billion. Last year’s total was $293 billion in the last 13 years. The five biggest monthly amounts have all happened this year. Of course, we talk about gross sales. There’s also gross redemptions. Gross redemptions have been off the charts as well. Year to date gross outflows, total $418 billion. That’s almost as much as was taken out in 2020 and 21 combined. So then the question is why the acceleration and outflows, the acceleration in gross inflows? Make sense? Municipals are an income oriented product. Municipal investors are income oriented investors. They’re looking for a safe haven for accumulated wealth the credit quality, the predictability of meanings and the income that they generate we all know that part of it.

(09:45)

So the increase in demand is not a surprise. Why the increase in outflows, couple of things I think are drivers of that. One is the decline in NAVs tends to frighten a lot of retail investors investors and financial advisors if they react to decline in NAVs by removing money from the funds in November. Unfortunately, I think a lot of money was on the sidelines. November, as you mentioned, was one of the best years in the history of the mini market. I think a lot of money to simply missed the opportunity to recapture some of the years’ loss in November. But I think the decline in the NAVs has led to emotional reaction of investors leaving mutual funds as we got deeper into the count of year. I do think that from what I’ve heard anecdotally and in conversations, there’s a fair amount of tax loss harvesting that’s been going on in selling mutual funds and harvesting those tax losses.

(10:45)

And as we get into the very end of the calendar year into November and December, it seems counterintuitive that muni mutual funds would have taxable capital gains to distribute to shareholders. But there are a handful of mutual funds that did indicate that they plan to distribute taxable capital gains in December, a few in November. I think that tends to stop new investments in their tracks. Investors who want to buy muni mutual funds to get the tax exempt income, they don’t want a taxable capital gain. They’ll generally wait until after the record date has passed for that dividend to get paid out before putting money to work. So I think all of those have combined to feed into the out cycle from muni mutual funds. But I think one of the biggest overlooked factor also is the equity market. The growth in equities is typically the engine for wealth creation for investors. Since the peak in the equity mutual fund just a year ago, equity mutual funds are down $3.4 trillion in total AUM. If the market was going up, we would expect a lot of retail investors would be rebalancing portfolios and moving money into fixed income if it’s in a taxable account that would go into mutual funds. So I think all of these have conspired to affect what’s going on that we’ve all seen with mutual funds this year.

Lynne Funk (12:19):

It’s interesting, Pat, I think we’ve spoken about the equity market in the past and the very real role that plays but I’m actually going to hand it off to Jessica who has covered she’s going to ask a couple questions here on an area that she’s actually spoken with you about Pat and that’s ETFs. So Jessica, I’ll hand it off to you now.

Jessica Lerner (12:40):

Thanks Lynne. So ETFs though have been one of the bright spots compared to the massive outflows from mutual funds we’ve seen what makes ETFs such a compelling or not investment vehicle, do ETFs even have staying power?

Patrick Luby (12:54):

So great question and I appreciate you Jessica asking it as a separate question from the meaning mutual funds, I think a lot of the market integrates ETFs in the mutual funds and talks about them as if they are the same thing, the wrap around the same product. But the use of mutual funds is different from the use of ETFs. Muni mutual funds are used almost exclusively by individual investors. ETFs are certainly used by individual investors as a replacement or supplement a compliment if you will, to individual bonds. But muni ETFs are also used by asset managers SMA managers asset owners, insurance companies for example, take advantage of ETFs and the different type of liquidity that’s available. And so there’s a more diverse mix of investors who are active in market participants who are active in the market for fixed income ETFs generally, and Munis benefit from that as well.

(14:02)

So muni mutual funds, because they are typically used by retail investors tend to be more subject to emotional investment decisions. ETFs when they’re used by professional investors tend to be used more as a way to fulfill on an investment policy. If there’s a specific objective that an portfolio manager is trying to do, ETFs are a way to get that done when the market is moving and it can be difficult to get bonds to put money to work ETFs because they’re available and trade on the exchange are readily available and they’re also readily convertible into cash pretty efficiently. So yes, I think ETFs absolutely have staying power for the market. Mutual funds are not going to go away though I think there will be peaceful coexistence between neutral funds and ETFs. But I do think that ETFs will continue to grow the adoption rate will continue to increase and I think we’ll continue to see more ETFs come into the market. I think one of the interesting developments about Muni ETFs is that out of the last 10 or 12 muni ETFs that have been launched, most of them have been active strategies. They’re not index tracking strategies. And I think that actually makes a ton of sense. I’m a big fan of active management. I think it makes sense to allow the portfolio manager to have some flexibility to react to the market as well as to the objectives of the ETF.

Jessica Lerner (15:31):

Thanks, Pat. You’ve alluded to this, but can you talk more about the evolving ownership in munis? We’ve seen a shift from direct retail to SMAs and other vehicles. You’ve called it the professionalization of retail. Can you explain this and how can you see it playing out in 2023?

Patrick Luby (15:48):

Yes. So let me explain what I mean by the professionalization of retail. When I started in the business, most individual investors were buying individual bonds and they’re putting ’em into their account and letting them mature. As bonds get called or mature, they’d put more money to work in it. In effect, that meant that there was really a million or more different strategies at work in the market. And you think about what that does for liquidity and demand in the marketplace, when you have a million different types of strategies at work in the marketplace as individual investors have shifted assets out of self-directed brokerage accounts and into professionally managed separately managed accounts these accounts are then professionally managed according to an investment policy statement. So now the market, instead of having a million different strategies at work in the marketplace, the strategies are being concentrated into a much smaller number of strategies.

(16:49)

And I would argue that the SMA strategies, while there’s a number of excellent providers of separately managed account strategies and some have different constraints that they’ll work within, whether it’s quality, thematic maturity duration, target, whatever, they’re really all a variation on the same theme. So this professionalization of retail where assets are now being mostly professionally managed means that there’s a concentration of demand into a much smaller number of strategies. I think this is also why we’re seeing a concentration of demand into the primary market because so many of these professional investors need large blocks of well structured good callable bonds to go into this portfolios that can be allocated across hundreds or thousands of sub-accounts within a strategy that didn’t used to be the case. And so this professionalization of retail is concentrating demand into particular types of bonds. This is one of the reasons why I really like the idea of the newer muni ETFs being actively managed because they can go into corners of the market where there’s less demand challenging the market for bonds, which of course, bids, yields and spreads, yields down and spreads tighter. So I think it creates a homogenization of demand but it also creates some deeper pools of opportunity for the professional managers. I think we’ll continue to see this in 2023.

Lynne Funk (18:24):

Great, thanks Jessica and Pat for that. We’re we’re going to take a short break here, but we’ll be right back. And we’re back with Pat Luby and John Ceffalio of CreditSights. John let’s talk credit. So some have made the case perhaps that muni credit peaked in the first half of 2022 after what had been kind of optimal credit conditions for state and local governments post-Covid. And in an environment where federal stimulus aid bolstered credit conditions, can you give us some insights into what are we looking at heading into 2023 in which a mild recession just might be possible?

John Ceffalio (19:10):

Yeah, so thanks for the question. I think with state and local governments, I think that’s fair to say that muni credit peaked in the first half of 2022. And then since then there’s been a few more issues with the revenues that were booming, slowing down a little bit stock market declines that hurts state revenues where we have a lot of capital gain that are capital gains heavy also hurts pensions when the stock market goes down. But I think generally speaking though, we still see state and local governments very strong credit conditions right now and well positioned to go into a recession. I think states for states have record reserves. The big muni bond issuing states have generally reserves well over 10%. Pension funding is in much better shape than it was say five or 10 years ago. And some of the more troubled credits, some of the bad actors have gotten religion and have just made better decisions over the previous years.

(20:25)

And of course they’ve been helped by a federal stimulus. So for example, Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut, those credits are aren’t far better shape now than they were going into the pandemic. They’re in far better shape now than they were in 2015. All of them have gotten upgrades recently. And then on the local government side again, let’s see, strong credit conditions with good reserves. The big credits have record reserves. We do. And property tax revenues have held up very well bolstered by the run up in property values in 2020 and 21. We are looking at declining property values in some places now, but that takes a long time to work into actual property assessments. So those keep revenues stable even when the real estate market starts to decline. I think a couple issues with local governments that we see are local governments are more labor intensive and so wage pressures are definitely coming into play. It’s been hard for them to hire people’s headline this morning about the tremendous amount of vacancies in New York City jobs. And we’ll see some union issues with local governments too and also with local governments. Business districts continue to see some reduction in property values because of work from home. So there’s a few issues, but I would say with state and local governments, they’re in excellent shape going into a potential recession.

Lynne Funk (22:03):

Great. What about sectors? Can you talk to maybe to some specific sectors that gosh any number that have been impacted First by Covid various things like HigherEd and healthcare, those types transit what do you sectors have been hit harder than others and could be hit harder in 2023?

John Ceffalio (22:26):

Yeah, I think you hit the nail in the head on some of that are having some troubles. I think generally revenue bond sectors, the water and sewer and the public power have done very well throughout the pandemic. They’re going to face some labor issues also. They’re, they’re facing some issues with increased capital plans due to climate change issues. But those sectors are in good shape. I think we’re used to see some problems as in healthcare where rising labor costs have caused some problems. There’s been more downgrades there than upgrades this year in that sector. Higher ed, we at credit sites spend a lot of time on higher education because of the worsening US demographics. We’re seeing a continued decline in higher education enrollments. There’s fewer high school graduates than there used to be, and that’s going to get worse. And an increasing number of those high school graduates are not going on to higher education.

(23:27)

And so we see the sector, especially the brand name school’s doing fine, but the say a minus and below higher education, except where you have a really a strong, unique niche. We see declining credit conditions. So in higher ed we would be looking for more downgrades and probably more mergers being forced in the years to come. So that’s a sector to watch out for. And then you also mentioned mass transit. Most mass transit credits are backed by special taxes, usually sales tax sales taxes done phenomenal because of inflation. If you know have 9% inflation, that gives you an extra 9% more or less in your sales tax even without organic growth. But the big one would be the New York mta which we just released a report on this morning. And it does have a large lie, the transportation revenue bonds, which is about 20 billion of bonds, has a pledge of fair boxes. And New York MTA is still running about 35% less ridership than it was prior to the pandemic. So they continue to struggle and they continue to spend down stimulus and they’re going to probably need to get additional state aid in the future. So that’s a credit that we keep an eye on.

Lynne Funk (24:57):

That’s interesting. I haven’t gotten to your report yet, but I definitely will. One of the things, I think even the MTAs, it’s interesting, I’m in New York and I definitely take the subway quite significantly less than I used to. And one of the other things I think is interesting is when you think about hiring, it’s, I know we were speaking with the MTA and they’re saying we’re competing for employees with Amazon and with Uber. It’s such an interesting shifting dynamic of how even when you look at credits of how to staff these in institutions.

Patrick Luby (25:31):

So one other sector that we think is interesting as we come into 2023 is the municipal airport revenue bonds. Roger King, who is our senior analyst here at credit sites, who covers the airlines, has noted that there appears to be a secular change in traveler behavior. He attributes it. And I think the airlines attribute it to the hybrid work schedule where folks aren’t necessarily wedded to the office five days a week, which limits when they could leave town for a weekend and when they would have to be back. So the greater work flexibility is leading to greater travel flexibility. And the airlines are seeing more travel earlier on the weekend prior to the weekend and coming back earlier in the week when that didn’t used to be the case. And I think airline and payments are strong. They’re getting close to the 2019 level, which was the all-time record was 2019.

(26:30)

It’s certainly not consistent across all airports. Some of the international departures and some of the smaller airports are not on, they’re behind the US trend. But other airports have seen very strong recovery such as Nashville and Austin. And there’s some other airports. And I think the market environment in which we find ourselves also where we’re expecting that investors are going to have a difficult time finding bonds, they’re going to be scrambling for yield and airports, if you look simply at the yield on airport revenue bonds they are appealing. But we’ve reminded our clients that two-thirds of the airport bond market is subject to the AMT. There’s less liquidity available in a n t bonds. We’re very big fans of non AMT airports. They’re difficult to get ahold of in the new issues. They’re much smaller part of the market. But need, if somebody’s thinking about airports, the need to go in clear eye because there are some institutions, ETFs, for example, that won’t buy AMT bonds. But overall, the sector we we’d like and we see some opportunities and airports and expect that demand is going to be focused on the sector going forward.

Lynne Funk (27:43):

Pat, that’s interesting that you bring up a dearth of supply in sense with airports in particular. But this is kind of a nice segue that I would wanna transition over to Jessica to talk about bond volume. Jessica.

Jessica Lerner (27:59):

So let’s talk about bond volume 2022 is looking to disappoint with volume down by about 16% and taxables down more than 50%. Many firms have begun making predictions for 2023 total issuance ranging from three 50 billion to 500 billion. What is credit sites estimates fall and why does the actual supply figure even matter for 2023?

Patrick Luby (28:27):

So great question about does the supply really matter? We haven’t put a final number to it. I can tell you we’ll be closer to the three 50 end of the spectrum than to the 500 end of the spectrum. But I think it’s interesting as much turmoil as we’ve had in the market this year, new money borrowing is pretty close to the recent trend. I think we’re going to continue to see that for the new money borrowing refunding obviously is the big wild card refundings are down by more than half of year to date through the end of November. We’re not going to get much in December either. But I think the actual total supply for the year is interesting. But I think what’s really, really important for the market is the pace of issuance.

(29:20)

The concentration of demand into professionally managed accounts means that new issue volume tends to attract buyers into the market. That’s why when supply peaks, we can see buyers coming in off the sideline, but because the demand is really reliant on individual investors, if there’s too much of a surge of supply, it can easily overwhelm the direct and indirect demand from individual investors and the market can cheapen markedly. So I think the total supply figure for the year is interesting, but I think it’s really the pace of issuance that’s going to be the deciding factor for how do total returns look in 2023. Now where we are in the Fed Fed fund cycle, the market is currently pricing in a peak and fed funds in about the middle of 2023. Historically the yield yields have started to rally before the Fed has completed its hiking cycle.

(30:28)

So I wouldn’t be surprised to see issuers who have the flexibility about when they borrow to de-emphasize the first part of the year when the Fed is likely to still be raising rates and try to borrow more in the second half of the year. So we could see, even if volume comes in next year, say it comes in at 400 or 425 billion, if it’s all back loaded towards the end of the year, I think the market could really underperform. That’s going to create opportunity for active managers. But I think that’s really going to be the key to watches. How does new issuance ramp up in the first quarter of the year? I think that’s going to be a really good indicator of how issuers are perceiving the interest rate environment.

Jessica Lerner (31:16):

Circling back to taxables, do you think taxable issuance could rebound if rates stabilize? I mean, do taxables even have a place in the market?

Patrick Luby (31:26):

They do. I’ve been doing some looking at the data, there’s a pretty good chunk of callable tax exempt bonds with a 5% or higher coupon that become callable in 2023 or later, but which have not already been refunded. So I think those bonds should be in the money for taxable refunding. We’ll have to see what the appetite is for it. I haven’t looked down into the sectors. The biggest users of taxable refundings have been the colleges and universities and also the hospitals. There’s particular challenges in those sectors, but I think the taxables is sort of like the ETF question. This is a part of the market that is absolutely here to stay. There’s enormous demand for municipal credit risk in investment grade bond portfolios because tax exempt munis are simply too rich for most of those portfolios. The appetite for taxable munis is very, very deep. So I think the ability to get refundings priced in the taxable market could potentially be much more efficient than a tax exempt refunding.

Lynne Funk (32:45):

So Pat, you just touched on one of my favorite questions to ask, and that is the demand for taxables and growth from foreign investors from some crossover buyers. But that could be a whole other podcast in my mind. So we’re coming up on some time here. I would just ask perhaps that both Pat and Johnny, do you have some final thoughts to leave with the listeners? What do you think the market should be paying attention to most as we enter this new year?

John Ceffalio (33:17):

Yeah, thanks Lynne. I’ll go first and let Pat finish up. But I think on the credit side, I just want to point to two things coming up. And first would be the PREPA bankruptcy in Puerto Rico. They’ve been in default since 2014. Just in the last week or two they cut a deal with their fuel line lenders. And on December 8th, which what I’m recording is tomorrow is the deadline for the judge to come up with a full restructuring plan. There’s $9 billion of bonds that are in default. And so that’ll be a big marker for the muni market to get those bonds restructured back into the general market. And that’ll also be key for assessing how the Puerto Rico economy is going to grow once we know what the cost of power is going to be down there on the island. The second thing I would mention is that we should continue to look out for is going to continue to be a rising concern, is event and disaster risk as exacerbated by climate change.

(34:24)

I think more than ever, this is a risk, a very unpredictable one. And I hear people sometimes say, well, the bonds are always fine and places always recover after disaster. I would just point to a couple things that have happened in the last year or two that have been a big deal in the muni market. Fires in California have caused what’s likely to be a default in of muni bonds in paradise in Texas. The winter storm from last winter caused a number of downgrades, including at marquee muni issuers like San Antonio Public Service to pay off their liability from that storm. And areas of southwest Louisiana around Lake Charles taken big population losses from the series of hurricanes in 2020 and have not come back. So these type of things point the way to future problems cuz we’re seeing increasing numbers of disasters. And that climate change is also a longer term issue too, as there’s a gradual change in the climate, which is unpredictable in certain areas how that affects agriculture, the desirability of some areas. So I think that’s an area that the muni market is going to continue to sharpen its focus on in the coming year.

Patrick Luby (35:53):

I think from a market’s perspective, even if we get into a more constructive interest rate environment, investors and participants should be prepared for a new environment of volatility. As I’ve mentioned before, it comes back again to this concentration of demand and individual investors insurance companies, banks, they’re generally priced out of the tax exempt market. So I think one of the most important things to pay attention to is the muni to corporate relationship because that’s the indicator of when are those investors going to participate in Munis. Look at if you’re looking at a new issue, how do the prospective yields for a new issue? Pricing scale compared to the after tax yields for a comparably rated corporate bond that will tell you are they going to care or not. Volatility does not necessarily mean that the wheels are coming off the market means the market needs to cheapen to be able to get enough demand to clear the market. So when you see increasing ratio of muni to corporate yields when it gets to parody, demand can be very, very deep. So definitely watch the muni to corporate relationship because of the increased volatility in the marketplace.

Lynne Funk (37:13):

So just a few things to keep an eye out for sure. John, from what you gave us, the climate issues, Puerto Rico too, definitely two areas that we could stand to do a podcast on our own. Both of those for sure. And perhaps with climate change, several. So do keep your phone lines open for me and for next year to revisit this. And Pat, thank you too for, I think that’s something that’s really interesting, especially after this year to really look at how the relationship to Munis and corporates and how that might affect the demand for Munis, how you can broaden the investor base of this kind of homogenous investor based market. Thank you both for joining us today. Thank you, Jessica for joining. It’s been a great conversation.

John Ceffalio (38:09):

Yeah, thanks so much Lynne and Jessica. We’ve enjoyed it.

Patrick Luby (38:12):

Thanks very much.

Lynne Funk (38:13):

All right. Happy holidays everyone. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to this Bond Buyer podcast. I produced this episode with audio production by Kevin Parise. Special thanks this week to Pat Luby and John Ceffalio of CreditSights for joining us. Thanks to Jessica Lerner, our markets reporter. Rate us, review us and subscribe to our content at www.bondbuyer.com/subscribe. From the Bond Buyer I’m Lynne Funk and thanks for listening.