Recent Reads

The Fed Said Nothing Has Changed Except. . . The Markets Are Happy, for Now.

By Marty Margolis on March 20, 2025

Sometimes meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee bring great market changes, sometimes not. Yesterday’s meeting was a Not. Bottom line: the Fed said not much and investors, skittish over market direction, were relieved, with both equities and bonds rising in price after the meeting’s concluding announcement. Most public funds investors limit their involvement to […]

A Bond Fund that Isn’t

By Marty Margolis on March 12, 2025

If you ask a local government investor what additional offering they might use, they often respond that it would be a fund that invests in longer-maturity investments but allows them to redeem their shares at par whenever they want. Anyone who has taken Investments 101 knows that this is (usually) an impossibility. Investing beyond the […]

Unsettled Times, So Hunker Down

By Marty Margolis on March 5, 2025

Last week’s Research Note “The R Word” perhaps seemed a bit off track to some folks, but the above chart, published Friday by the Atlanta Federal Reserve, captured a lot of eyes. It looks eerily like the same chart in the first quarter of 2020 when Covid shut down the markets and the economy in […]

Research Note: The R Word

By Marty Margolis on February 27, 2025

This is a wonky post, and I hope it is not out of reach to some readers, but I think it’s important to provide context to the current market. Sentiment in the bond market has undergone a subtle shift in the past couple of weeks with some investors now expecting a slowing economy. And even […]

Coda: About Federal Agencies; the Debt Ceiling Game; and FDIC Insurance

By Marty Margolis on February 20, 2025

Coda: Another Observation About Federal Agency Debt The last issue of Beyond the News described the changes in debt issuance by federal agencies since the Great Recession, noting three key points: (1) shrinkage in the amounts issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, (2) a sharp reduction in the volume of short-term discount notes issued, […]

Federal Agencies: Oh, For The Good Old Days

By Marty Margolis on February 13, 2025

There was a time when it was easy to outshine a Treasury investment with little risk. Federal agency debt was the key. That time is long gone, a consequence of the financial crisis and the Great Recession of 2008. The result diminished, perhaps forever, the role of federal agencies that had been a lynchpin of […]

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Key metrics and trends in the public funds investment market.