Explore how laddered municipal portfolios perform in rising interest rate environments.
Insights
Insights
Get Ahead of Rising Taxes in 2013
Eaton Vance Municipal Insight Committee, March 2012
Top earners with a knack for reading the tea leaves in Washington may want to begin taking appropriate steps to blunt some of the effects of the expected end of the Bush-era tax cuts and the imposition of additional new taxes, which together will result in a sizable tax hikes next year.
Mixed Signals from Rating Agencies Underscore the Value of Professional Credit Research
Eaton Vance Municipal Insight Committee, March 2012
Last year proved to be an object lesson in the need for independent, professional analysis in the municipal (muni) bond market. Investors who look at ratings trends in 2011 from the two major rating agencies–Moody’s Investors Service and Standard and Poor’s Corp.–can be forgiven for wondering if the two agencies were analyzing the same market. This underscores our longstanding belief that investors should look to rating agencies as just one input in the investment decision-making process.
One Year Later, Fundamentals – Not Speculation – Drive Muni Performance
Eaton Vance Municipal Insight Committee, February 2012
Municipal bonds (munis) staged a dramatic comeback in 2011, outperforming nearly all other asset classes, including U.S. Treasuries, commodities and equities.
This performance is all the more stunning in light of the drubbing muni prices took toward the end of 2010. One of the chief causes was a research report written by banking sector equity analyst, Meredith Whitney, and published in the fall of 2010. In her report, and in a subsequent interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” she predicted 50-100 sizeable defaults in 2011 and that defaults would total “hundreds of billions of dollars” of municipal debt.
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