by Gayl Mileszko

All the daily headlines lead us to believe that significant tax hikes are inevitable. There are innumerable fiscal challenges. We have spent $5.3 trillion so far in response to the pandemic-induced recession. There is serious talk of another multi-trillion infrastructure package. The balance sheet of the Federal Reserve has ballooned to $7.7 trillion. Our projected budget deficit — just halfway through the fiscal year — exceeds $1.7 trillion. The national debt now exceeds $28.2 trillion, a figure so large that it has lost meaning for most of us. The President who took office 100 days ago is seen by a good portion of the electorate as having a “mandate” to impose higher taxes on wealthy citizens and big business.

It is easy to understand why tax-exempt municipal bonds are now becoming scarcer and pricier amid all this tax hike chatter. The financial markets seem to sense a growing consensus for action based on media attention to various policymakers with platforms if not jurisdiction. Last year there was a “tax the rich” and “stick it to the corporations” campaign narrative that appeared to generate support for bogeys at around $400,000 in income, $1 million of gifts, and estates over $3.5 million. There are big bulls-eyes on companies seen as benefitting from the 2017 Trump tax cuts. Talk of retroactive applications makes the current grab for tax advantages all the more understandable.

Not a lot of opposition to the talk of tax increases has yet emerged. First of all, the specifics have not been presented, so special interest groups have nothing solid yet to analyze and object to. Some information was expected in the President’s address to the Joint Session of Congress on Wednesday, but the real details are being fleshed out and will take time. U.S. stocks nevertheless took a dive last Thursday on mere reports of plans to almost double the capital gains tax. The Dow dropped more than 320 points. The S&P 50, Nasdaq and Russell 2000 also fell, as did Treasury, corporate and muni yields.

In America, a tax rebellion is always right around the corner. And, given the changes in work and living arrangements brought about by the coronavirus, we are seeing how quickly our fellow citizens in states like New York and New Jersey now vote with their feet when informed that they must pay a higher so-called “fair share”. Companies with operations in multiple nations do not hesitate to move their headquarters, jobs, ingenious products and tax revenue to more friendly host nations. Any efforts to standardize tax laws among 195 different sovereign nations have about a zero chance of success.

We know of no legal prohibition against tax measures that apply retroactively. However, for a variety of reasons, retroactive tax provisions are not common or practical. In Washington, there are strong accounting, financial planning and litigation lobbies. There is also the simple matter of IRS logistics: printing the new forms and instructions affecting virtually every taxpayer and business, publishing the necessary regulations and guidance, educating customer service representatives and enforcement staff, and so on. If you examine past tax legislation, you will note that some provisions have different forward effective dates. Others may be temporary, with sunset dates in order to conform with the requirements of the enabling legislation. There are quite a few provisions in the 2017 Tax Reform bill that expire in 2025 without further action.

As many presidents have learned, tax reform bills are not so easy to get through Congress. They are nearly impossible if rolled out in pieces or phases. There have been at least 21 bills that increased federal tax revenues over at least one fiscal year since 1940 but the only recent major overhauls took place in 1986 and 2017. In order to succeed with cuts — never mind hikes — an administration has to draft very detailed proposals, preferably supplying specific statutory and explanatory language in its annual budget. Given the number of departments, agencies and offices involved, internal consensus is not easily obtained. The Tax Code is so unwieldy there are really no single source experts. In 2020, there were nearly 10 thousand sections. On the legislative side, numerous congressional committees and subcommittees are involved, with testimony, drafting and re-drafting, mark-ups, votes, speeches, and dialogue with constituents. As we saw in 2017, there are leaks, deep intra-party divisions, odd rules and unusual motivations. It is just plain impossible to “fast-track” anything without very heavy and sustained leadership pressure. In the process, hundreds of errors are made and so many unintended effects are revealed that there is typically at least one “technical corrections” bill required within a year or so of passage. That in and of itself can be a magnet for many unrelated and controversial provisions, and difficult to pass.

In the end, so much horse trading for votes is involved that passage of a 500+ page tax bill with an explanatory report of similar size would likely come at the price of all other major administration priorities. This time, it could possibly come at the expense of health care reform, civil rights, climate change, immigration, and infrastructure initiatives. The infrastructure details mean a lot to those of us in the municipal bond markets, most notably tax provisions involving advance refundings. But bear in mind that there are more than 12,000 active, registered lobbyists in DC and almost all of them have at least one special tax provision that they may want included or excluded. The budget committees, Congressional Budget Office, Office of Management and Budget, the Treasury, and the Joint Committee on Taxation are all involved in “scoring” the revenue impact of legislative proposals. These are not simple exercises and they are highly political. If reform is not achieved early in the honeymoon period, sophisticated vote counters and insider knowledge can lead to early pivots by certain classes of taxpayers and international/supranational corporations, significantly altering the projected revenue impacts before debate on the reforms is even over. The 1981 Reagan cuts and 1993 Clinton hikes were enacted by August of the first year in office; the 2001 Bush cuts were agreed to by May.

We will hear more debate on tax policy in Washington in the coming months as plans unfold and we encourage our readers to become involved. There are thin Democrat margins in the House and Senate, and Senate passage would entail a vice presidential tiebreaker and complete loyalty from the caucus. In the current environment, there will have to be close coordination with the Federal Reserve and monetary policy, and with the budget, taxation, and appropriations committees. If reform is enacted this year, mid-term elections may not be seen as a referendum as the full impact will not be felt by all taxpayers until forms are filed in 2023. If a tax reform bill is not signed into law by December, the odds are that tax hikes are unlikely to happen in 2022, an election year. In the meantime, 26 states and the District of Columbia had notable tax changes take effect in January, and more are on tap for new state fiscal years; in New York, the FY22 increases began this month.

In the past week, municipal bonds in high tax states have traded at extraordinarily high prices. Stanford University bonds with a 5% coupon due in 2049 traded this week at $159.792. Hamilton College bonds issued through Oneida County’s Local Development Corporation with a 5% coupon due in 2051 priced at $158.567. New York City Municipal Water Finance Authority bonds and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey bonds with 5% coupons due in 2031 are trading in the $136-$137 range. Long Island Power Authority and Monmouth County Improvement Authority bonds with a 5% coupon due in 10 years offer yields of only between 0.975% and 1.077%. Many individual and institutional investors are holding on to the bonds with federal as well as state tax exemption while looking for more to buy directly or through mutual funds and exchange traded funds. However, new supply is lacking. This week’s calendar, for example, totals only about $5.5 billion, and more than 20% is being issued for refunding purposes in federally taxable structures, and more than 20% is offered with forward settlements. Last week, the most yield we found was in a $10.9 million BB+ rated Michigan Math and Science Academy bond deal that had 2051 term bonds priced with a 4.00% coupon to yield 3.03%

This week, the Federal Open Market Committee met on Tuesday and Wednesday and kept its ultra-loose policy and near zero rates in effect, as expected. Investors are obsessed with guessing how much more economic ground has to be gained before the Fed begins tapering its monthly Treasury and mortgage bond purchases of $120 billion, and official conversations about rate increases begin. To be clear, Fed futures traders expect no changes in rates this year.

Where do you invest? We encourage you to contact your HJ Sims representative. Our banking, trading and sales executives are active in the day-to-day markets. For investors, our credit-driven strategies are designed for the outcome of income.

Is this the right time to borrow? For senior living communities, we point out that we are seeing some of the strongest lending conditions in our 86-year history. Our aim as always is to Partner Right, Structure Right and Execute Right.

by Gayl Mileszko

We live in an era when past history is being denounced, flags and monuments buried, and classic old books and movies pulled from the shelves as perceived evidence of systemic racism. One fellow who paid a pretty sum to send his pre-teen daughter to a prominent prep school in New York felt that school leaders were going too far with sudden changes to the school’s curriculum and admissions requirements. He categorized the new policies as mob appeasement and sent a thought-provoking letter expressing his opinion on the woke wars and cancel culture to other parents at the school, entreating them to make their views known to the administration and board. His words soon went viral, stirring emotional responses and revealing how differently we view civic-mindedness.

The Pandemic has certainly magnified some big social, economic and political gulfs in our society that cannot be ignored. But as a republic, as a nation, we will always have certain continental divides. Every generation has stories about the societal changes and challenges we have encountered, fought, adapted to, and overcome. For those of us who grew up in the 1970’s, we had the crises of the Vietnam War, Watergate, double-digit inflation and energy shortages. But this was the decade in which we built the Sears Tower, invented floppy disks, digital wristwatches, portable cassettes, cell phones and voice mail, recorded great music, and passed a gender equality law. We took inspiration from the perfect wins by Mark Spitz, Nadia Comaneci, the Miami Dolphins, Billie Jean King, and Secretariat. We escaped by reading J.R.R. Tolkien fantasies and Agatha Christie mysteries, and by watching movies like the Godfather and Rocky. And we were able to laugh at ourselves and all the stereotypes portrayed in Blazing Saddles, the off-color comedy which has been deemed – at least for now – “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and preserved in the National Film Registry.

It will be several decades before historians assess the moment in which we now live and document the social and political highlights and lowlights of this Pandemic era. In retrospect, economic conditions will be the focus for many. Reference will be made to the blazing hot financial markets that categorized the start of the decade, in spite of everything else, stoked by unprecedented central bank interventions and fiscal stimulus. In the depth of a worldwide recession, an endless series of records is being set. Given assurances of more bond-buying and rate controls for the next few years, there may be no stopping the rallies as the recovery takes hold. For new investors unaccustomed to volatility, the day-to-day performance are often jittery with dips and bumps driven by virus case reports, corporate earnings announcements, and weekly government data almost always released with a positive spin. There are also numerous technical factors, policy decisions involving negative interest rates by other central banks, and unexpected events like the situation with Ever Given, that massive container ship that clogged one of the world’s most vital waterways for six days and affected billions of maritime commerce.

Straddles, for those unfamiliar with the official definition, are typically strategies used by traders who anticipate a big move in the price of a stock but want to hedge their bets as to whether it will go up or down. So straddling is a neutral strategy involving the simultaneous buy of a put option and a call option on a stock with the same strike price and expiration date. The straddler profits whenever the stock rises or falls from the strike price by an amount that is more than the cost of the premium. In the current market, we are seeing a different type of straddler – the equity buyer that also likes higher yielding municipal bonds. This is typically a higher income individual residing in a high tax state who likes the dividends and returns of equities but seeks offsetting tax-exempt income and relative safety, mostly from essential public purpose bonds issued with both state and federal tax exemptions paying semi-annual interest and pledging the return of the original principal at maturity. He or she sees the muni market as solid, fairly liquid, and social good-promoting, one that has been rising with — although uncorrelated to — stocks. This investor might straddle other sectors and asset classes as well; CCC-rated corporate bonds, leveraged loans, bitcoin, and even non fungible tokens (NFT), units of data stored on blockchain that commodify and certify digital assets in art, music and sports, for example, as unique.

Municipal bonds have been in particularly great demand, and the clamor for tax-exempt coupons (if not yields) of 5% continues. High-yield municipal bond mutual funds just reported a record $1.28 billion of inflows, breaking a record set in January. In the week ended April 14, muni funds in total took in $2.255 billion. Exchange-traded muni funds reported inflows of $478 million, after having added $350 million in the previous week. Fund assets under management have surpassed $900 billion for the first time and inflows this year have already surpassed the 12-month total for 8 of the last 11 years. In this context, fund portfolio managers, like individual buyers, are understandably having a hard time sourcing product. The supply calendar continues has been light, typically running between $6 billion to $8 billion a week, much lower during holiday-shortened trading sessions. Prices continue to escalate in the primary and secondary markets. The one-year AAA muni yield is at an all-time low of 0.05%.

Some Members of Congress are straddling the fence, but there is non-stop tax talk coming out of Washington. It has many families searching for tax-advantaged investments. The last round of state and local stimulus has bolstered the finances of many frequent borrowers and investors heavy with cash see municipal credit outlooks as improved. Credit spreads continue to compress, so any coupon or call structure that offers additional yield is being bid up. Few muni investors are deterred by the recent gyrations in the Treasury market and auction results. At the close on Tuesday, the 10-year AAA muni general obligation bond yield stood at 0.93% or 60% of the comparable U.S. Treasury yield at 1.56%. The 30-year muni benchmark yield at 1.55% was 69% of the comparable Treasury at 2.25%.

Last week, Florida’s Capital Trust Agency sold $859.6 million of non-rated charter school bonds structured with a 2056 maturity that priced with a coupon of 5.00% to yield 4.00%. The Arizona Industrial Development Agency brought a $33.4 million charter school financing for BB rated Somerset Academy of Las Vegas featuring 2051 term bonds priced at 4.00% to yield 3.22%. The California School Finance Authority had an $11.8 million non-rated charter school social bond issue for iLead Lancaster with a 2061 maturity priced at 5.00% to yield 3.64%. And the Public Finance Authority brought a $9.8 million non-rated transaction for Davidson Charter Academy with a single maturity in 2056 priced with a rare 6.00% coupon and an even rarer discount o yield 6.432%. Among other high yield financings, the Cleveland Cuyahoga County Port Authority came to market with a $250.5 million taxable federal lease revenue bond issue for the Veterans Administration Health Care Center that priced at par to yield 4.425% in 2031. The California Community Housing Agency issued $174.1 million of non-rated essential housing bonds due in 2056 with a 4% coupon yielding 3.05%.

This week, we expect the biggest calendar of the year at $10 billion with a significant percent coming as taxable. So far this year, approximately $41.6 billion of municipal bonds have been issued as taxable or with corporate CUSIPs, up 16% over the amount in 2020. California is issuing general obligation bonds with a 5-month forward delivery date, the largest such forward settlement on record and the latest of $5 billion sold in 2021. The State of Connecticut is also coming with $145 million of special tax obligation transportation infrastructure refunding with a forward settlement in mid-October. Approximately eight financings designated as green, social and sustainable bonds are scheduled for sale. But higher yielding offerings are sparse. Three more charter schools plan sales. At this writing, the Dow is up 2.5% so far in April, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are up more than 4%. The Russell 2000 has declined by 1.45% while oil is up 5.5%, gold is up 3.8%, and silver is up 6%. Bitcoin is down about 5% but Dogecoin, the meme cryptocurrency created as a joke, is blazing new trails with a market cap of $54 billion, one that exceeds that of Ford Motor and Kraft Heinz.

by Gayl Mileszko

The U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing has responsibility for producing all of our paper currency but the U.S. Mint is the sole manufacturer of legal tender coinage. Originally placed with the State Department in 1792 to produce the coins needed for the nation to conduct its trade and commerce, the Mint became an independent agency in 1799 and then a bureau of the U.S. Treasury in 1873. It is now the world’s largest producer of gold and silver bullion coins. In addition to bullion, pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, the Mint also produces coin-related products such as Congressional Gold Medals and commemoratives like the silver dollar, silver half-dollar and gold five-dollar coins just issued in January for the National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum. More than 1,600 employees work at Mint facilities in Washington, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Denver, West Point and Fort Knox. Although its facilities are closed to the public during the pandemic, the Mint has long offered tours of the production sites in Pennsylvania and Colorado where visitors learn about the craftsmanship involved in the design, sculpture and striking processes for U.S coins, each a miniature work of art.

Last year, the U.S. experienced severe coin shortages as consumers moved to digital transactions and so few of us emptied out piggy banks or cleaned under couch cushions and car seats for loose change and cashed in our coins. The urgent needs of merchants and banks prompted the Mint to increase production to the highest levels since 2001 just as spot prices for nickel increased 5.6% over 2019, platinum cost 3.8% more, gold rose 25.8%, copper dropped 3.6%, and zinc fell 15.4%. The Mint shipped 15.5 billion circulating coins to the Federal Reserve Banks and, in response to the soaring demand for gold, more than 24.7 million ounces of bullion. It transferred the seigniorage, the difference between the face value and cost of production which amounted to $40 million, to the Treasury, chump change in the effort to reduce a federal deficit that has now grown to $1.7 trillion in the first six months of Fiscal Year 2021.

The dictionary definition of coin long read: “a small, flat, and usually round piece of metal issued by a government as money.” The key point was that the coins were issued by a government. This week, COIN is the new Nasdaq ticker symbol for Coinbase, the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange. The company has only been around since 2012 but Wednesday’s IPO-like entry has been one of the most anticipated market events of 2021 as it appears to reflect acceptance of crypto as a legitimate industry and points to the possibility of widespread adoption of digital currency. The Coinbase platform enables some 7,000 institutions and 56 million retail customers to buy, sell, and store cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. The majority of its revenues come from transaction fees of about 0.5% and services such as storage and analytics, while about 10% of the company’s revenues come from sales of its own crypto assets to customers. It also makes money from things like margin fees and a rewards credit card program. In 2020, total revenue amounted to $1.28 billion, up from around $534 million in 2019 as the company’s monthly transacting user base rose from about 1 million to about 2.8 million. Net income was $322 million. In the first quarter of 2021, estimated revenues grew to $1.8 billion on trading volume of $335 billion as the price of Bitcoin almost doubled, causing the number of active monthly traders to more than double to 6.1 million.

COIN is using the less common practice of a direct listing on the Nasdaq. No new shares will be created in the process, and only some of the 130.7 million of Class A shares and 68.5 million of Class B shares outstanding are being sold to the public. No underwriters are involved, and there is said to be no share dilution or lockup period. Nasdaq and Goldman Sachs set a reference price of $250 per share, giving Coinbase a valuation of $66.5 Billion. Demand appears to be overwhelming and valuations extremely high. The overall value of more than 6,600 coins tracked by CoinGecko recently surpassed $2 trillion. Even Dogecoin, with a Shiba Inu dog as its logo and launched as a joke, now has a market cap of $17 billion. But the decentralized and largely unregulated finance business is unquestionably volatile and still highly mysterious and suspicious to many of us. There is a very complex process of mining with staggering energy requirements and environmental costs. There are caps on supply. Anybody with basic programming skills and an understanding of the technical infrastructure can create and market their own private digital currency. Crypto is understood or misunderstood to involve instruments of money laundering. Assets are kept on a shared ledger known as a blockchain, but if you forget your password you can lose access to your entire digital wallet. Some call it hackproof while others know of scams and see plenty of security risks in trading and network storage. Warren Buffett called Bitcoin a “mirage” but strategists at JPMorgan are suggesting cryptocurrency as a way to hedge against significant fluctuations in traditional asset classes and Bank of New York Mellon has announced plans to hold, transfer and issue digital currencies for its clients. Goldman set up a crypto trading desk and plans to begin offering investments in digital assets. A number of companies including Tesla, Burger King, Xbox, PayPal, and Starbucks now accept bitcoin, recognized as the original cryptocurrency founded in 2009, as a form of payment.

Cryptocurrencies are often confused with other digital currencies but both are now a major focus of central banks around the world. Privately issued digital currencies can certainly reduce the ability of the Federal Reserve to control exchange rates and money supply. But with respect to sovereign digital currencies, the Fed Chair said in February that they are looking “very carefully” at a digital dollar. The Treasury Secretary testified that a digital version of the dollar could help address hurdles to financial inclusion in the U.S. among low-income households. Many concerned with privacy, however, are alarmed as digital currencies are trackable, allowing for surveillance and — potentially — supervision over individual transactions as well as the size of accounts. They can also be programmed to have expiration dates. Sovereign digital currencies could be used to work around U.S. sanctions and potentially oust the dollar as the world’s dominant reserve currency. India is considering a new law that bans all tokenized representation of money unless it is electronic cash from its own central bank. The People’s Bank of China just became the first major central bank to launch a virtual currency, e-CNY. Officials there claim that the purpose is to replace banknotes and coins, to reduce the incentive to use cryptocurrencies and to “back up” privately run electronic payments systems. The trial issuance of digital yuan has begun after 7 years of research, and China plans a broader roll-out next February during the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Officials at the U.S. Treasury, State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council are taking a close look at the implications.

The future of our global financial system appears to be changing, perhaps our legal systems as well with the introduction of smart contracts run on cryptographic code. In a low rate environment with high leverage and sensations of inflation and bubbles, plus policies and conditions arising from the pandemic, capital may be re-deploying from stocks and bonds. But for now, the financial markets remain immersed in day-to-day economic news, which indicates modest inflation and record global growth, as well as developments on the Russia-Ukraine border, with China and Taiwan, Iran and Israel, Minneapolis and Portland, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, Washington infrastructure talk and first quarter earnings reports. With the Fed playing down inflation and repeating familiar dovish narratives over and over, the Dow and S&P flip to record highs. Some question the numbers, but Bank of America just reported that inflows into global stock funds in the past 5 months ($576 Billion) have exceeded inflows in the prior 12 years ($452 Billion). Since 2008, inflows to stock funds have totaled $1 trillion versus $2.4 trillion for bond funds.

This week, Treasury auctions are expected to total $271 billion and the first one on Monday met with strong demand. The municipal calendar could total $7 billion, dominated by taxable sales. Five green, social and sustainability bond deals are featured and there is a $252 million non-rated deal for Florida charter schools. Municipals, which saw another $1.77 billion of mutual fund inflows last week, and continue to outperform Treasuries. Tax filings have been delayed to May 15 and cash is abundant. New issue pricings continue to be well received with both price bumps and positive secondary follow-through. Last week’s $7.6 billion slate included a $332.5 million non-rated California CSCDA Community Improvement Authority social bond financing for Altana-Glendale that had a 2056 maturity priced at 4.00% to yield 3.58%. The same maturity and coupon in a California Community Housing Agency issue for Mira Vista Hills Apartments priced to yield 3.70%. Among other high yield deals, the New Jersey Educational Facilities Authority had a $5.6 million tax-exempt series with a $38.5 million taxable Baa3-rated transaction for New Jersey City University structured with 2051 term bonds priced at par to yield 4.431%.

Corporate syndicate desks expect $25 billion of investment grade deals this week and $31 billion of high yield sales including the $5.5 billion United Airlines refinancing and a $1.8 billion deal for the Kissner purchase of Morton Salt. At this writing, the 2-year Treasury yield stands at 0.16%, the 10-year at 1.62%, and the 30-year at 2.30%. The 2-year Baa rated corporate bond yield is 1.77%, the 10-year is at 3.31% and the 30-year stands at 4.17%. The 2-year AAA municipal general obligation bond yield is 0.10%, the 10-year is at 1.01% and the 30-year is at 1.62%. The Dow stands at 33,677, the S&P 500 at 4,141, the Nasdaq at 13,996, the Russell 2000 at 2,228. Oil prices have climbed in the past week to $61.22 a barrel. Gold is priced at $1,745 an ounce, silver at $25.40, and platinum at $1,179. Bitcoin is at $64,478 and Ethereum is nearing $2,383.