Municipal bond exchange-traded funds are pulling in record cash as Bloomberg TV reported on Monday citing Barclays data, with ETFs making up nearly 11% of total municipal fund assets. But while the overall trend shows flows going into muni ETFs and coming out of muni mutual funds, that’s not a completely one-way migration.
Most recently, municipal bond ETFs are seeing a hiccup after being on a tear in 2022. The category has seen roughly $600 million in outflows year to date. Meanwhile, mutual funds saw significant outflows in 2022 and have pulled in several billion dollars this year.
Consider also that two of the largest muni bond ETFs have seen opposing flows year to date. The $32 billion iShares National Muni Bond ETF (MUB) has lost more than $567 million year to date, while the $25.4 billion Vanguard Tax-Exempt Bond ETF (VTEB) has gained $340.7 million in the same time period. Although this year muni bond ETFs have seen more than half a billion dollars in outflows, in the past 12 months, the category gained almost $28 billion.
Yahoo Finance
by Heather Bell
Tue, February 14, 2023