Municipal Monthly

Monthly Municipal Market Update, August 2023

A brief update on what's happening in the municipal bond market.

Natural disasters in focus: The risks that natural disasters can pose to municipal creditworthiness

The United States was hit by a wave of natural disasters in August, including a devastating wildfire in Maui, a rare tropical storm in California, and a powerful hurricane in Florida. Given the recent surge in these high-profile events, which are unfortunately becoming more frequent and more intense, we feel it is timely to provide insight on the risks that natural disasters can pose to municipal creditworthiness, and how we factor these risks into our credit selection.

We have long incorporated the potential effects of natural disasters such as floods, wildfires, and hurricanes into our assessment of a municipal obligor’s credit quality. We utilize third-party physical climate risk data, state-specific resources such as CalFire, and local information about mitigation and adaptation measures to assess the potential risk to an individual issuer. This assessment can impact our internal credit rating and ultimate opinion about a bond’s credit quality. Larger issuers with more internal resources are less likely to be severely impacted by a natural disaster, though smaller issuers also typically continue to pay debt service on time after an event occurs.

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Past performance is not a guarantee or a reliable indicator of future results.

Investing in municipal bonds involves the risks of investing in debt securities generally and certain other risks. Investors will, at times, incur a tax liability. Income from municipal bonds is exempt from federal income tax and may be subject to state and local taxes and at times the alternative minimum tax. Investing in the bond market is subject to risks, including market, interest rate, issuer, credit, inflation risk, and liquidity risk. The value of most bonds and bond strategies are impacted by changes in interest rates. Bonds and bond strategies with longer durations tend to be more sensitive and volatile than those with shorter durations; bond prices generally fall as interest rates rise, and low interest rate environments increases this risk. Reductions in bond counterparty capacity may contribute to decreased market liquidity and increased price volatility. Bond investments may be worth more or less than the original cost when redeemed.

The credit quality of a particular security or group of securities does not ensure the stability or safety of an overall portfolio. The quality ratings of individual issues/issuers are provided to indicate the credit-worthiness of such issues/issuer and generally range from AAA, Aaa, or AAA (highest) to D, C, or D (lowest) for S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch respectively.

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Charts are provided for illustrative purposes and are not indicative of the past or future performance of any PIMCO product.

Bloomberg Municipal Bond Index consists of a broad selection of investment-grade general obligation and revenue bonds of maturities ranging from one year to 30 years. It is an unmanaged index representative of the tax-exempt bond market. The index is made up of all investment grade municipal bonds issued after 12/31/90 having a remaining maturity of at least one year. The Bloomberg High Yield Municipal Bond Index measures the non-investment grade and non-rated U.S. tax-exempt bond market. It is an unmanaged index made up of dollar-denominated, fixed-rate municipal securities that are rated Ba1/BB+/BB+ or below or non-rated and that meet specified maturity, liquidity, and quality requirements. The Bloomberg Taxable Municipal Index represents a rules-based, market-value weighted index engineered for the long-term taxable bond market. For inclusion in the Index, bonds must be rated investment grade quality or better, have at least one year to maturity, have a coupon that is fixed rate, have an outstanding par value of at least $7 million, and be issued as part of a transaction of at least $75 million. The Intermediate Municipal subsector groups together securities with an average maturity between one to 10 years. The Bloomberg 1-10 Year Municipal Bond Index is an unmanaged index considered to be generally representative of investment-grade municipal issues having remaining maturities from 1-10 years and a national scope. The Bloomberg Muni Short (1-5) Index is the Muni Short (1-5) component of the Bloomberg Municipal Bond Index. The Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Index is a measure of the public obligations of the U.S. Treasury. Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Index represents securities that are SEC-registered, taxable, and dollar denominated. The index covers the U.S. investment grade fixed rate bond market, with index components for government and corporate securities, mortgage pass-through securities, and asset-backed securities. These major sectors are subdivided into more specific indices that are calculated and reported on a regular basis.  It is not possible to invest directly in an unmanaged index.

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CMR2023-0911-3108001