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Contact: Jennifer A. Galloway, Chief Communications Officer
             (703) 797-6600
             jgalloway@msrb.org

MSRB PUBLISHES FIRST QUARTER MUNICIPAL MARKET STATISTICS  

Alexandria, VA – The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) today published first quarter 2012 data covering municipal market trading, continuing disclosures and interest rate information in the $3.7 trillion municipal bond market. First quarter statistics can be downloaded for review and analysis. Statistics for 2011 can be accessed here.

Among the first quarter 2012 highlights:

  • The number of continuing disclosure documents provided to the MSRB in the first quarter of 2012 totaled 39,549, up from 36,780 a year earlier, and 17% higher than the 32,513 received during the same period in 2010.
  • Par amount of municipal securities traded decreased to $791,705 million in the first quarter of 2012 compared to the same period in 2011, while the number of trades decreased nearly 18 percent.
  • Trading of revenue bonds accounted for 62 percent of the par traded in the first quarter, compared to 67 percent in the same period last year.
  • Customer purchases of smaller trades of $100,000 or less accounted for approximately 7 percent of all par traded in customer purchases in the first quarter, compared to 8.6 percent in the first three months of 2011.
  • The number of variable rate demand obligations and auction rate resets registered the lowest quarterly totals in the first quarter of 2012 since the MSRB began collecting interest rate information in early 2009.

All quarterly statistical summaries include aggregate market information for different types of municipal issues and trades, and the number of interest rate resets for variable rate demand obligations and auction rate securities. The data also include statistics related to continuing disclosure documents received through the MSRB’s Electronic Municipal Market Access (EMMA®) website.

The MSRB’s market information transparency programs promote transparency and access to real-time, municipal market bond information. The MSRB makes this information available free of charge on its EMMA website. Daily and historical summaries of trade data based on security type, size, sector, maturity, source of repayment and coupon type are housed in EMMA’s Market Statistics section.

The EMMA website is a centralized online database operated by the MSRB that provides free public access to official disclosure documents and trade data associated with municipal bonds issued in the United States. In addition to current credit rating information, the EMMA website also makes available real-time trade data and primary market and continuing disclosure documents for over one million outstanding municipal bonds, as well as current interest rate information, liquidity documents and other information for most variable rate municipal securities.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) protects and strengthens the municipal bond market, enabling access to capital, economic growth, and societal progress in tens of thousands of communities across the country. The MSRB fulfills this mission by creating trust in our market through informed regulation of dealers and municipal advisors that protects investors, issuers and the public interest; building technology systems that power our market and provide transparency for issuers, institutions, and the investing public; and serving as the steward of market data that empowers better decisions and fuels innovation for the future. The MSRB is a self-regulatory organization governed by a board of directors that has a majority of public members, in addition to representatives of regulated entities. The MSRB is overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Congress.

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