Investing in the High Yield Municipal Market: How to Profit from the Current Municipal Credit Crisis and Earn Attractive Tax-Exempt Interest Income

CHAPTER 2

A Brief History of the High Yield Muni Market

As long as the municipal market has been around, financings of a speculative nature have been brought to market, most underwritten by early market pioneers such as The John Nuveen Co. and Herbert J. Sims. Because municipals have long been considered the backwaters of the fixed-income world, the sector has been thriving for decades with very little coverage from the financial media, at least until very recently. Given the scarcity of written records, this is more or less an oral history of the high yield municipal sector, based on my personal recollections from some 30 years of market experience and on interviews with some of my contemporaries who, like me, were lucky enough to witness the dawn of this fascinating asset class.