Contact: Bruce Hall, Senior Manager, Communications
202-838-1300
bhall@msrb.org
MSRB Reports Record Number of Trades in 2022
Washington, DC – The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) announced today that its Real-Time Transaction Reporting System (RTRS) has received a record number of municipal securities trades in 2022. As of the close of business on November 16, 2022, the number of trades reported to RTRS stands at 10.88 million, exceeding the previous annual trade record set in 2008.
“The record high number of trades in 2022 follows a record low in 2021 when municipal bond yields were at or near record lows,” said John Bagley, Chief Market Structure Officer. “The dramatic increase in trading in 2022 has been driven mainly by a significant increase in demand for municipal bonds by individual investors as bond yields have risen. This development supports the findings of our research on municipal bond market trade activity and underscores the importance of individual investors to this market, whether they are buying individual bonds, mutual funds or ETFs.”
Year-to-date trade count in 2022 is up 61% from the same period in 2021. November is expected to be the seventh of the past eight months with trades exceeding one million. This compares with a total of eight months recording one million or more trades over the last 15 years. Both number of trades and par amount traded for municipal bonds are available on the MSRB’s Electronic Municipal Market Access (EMMA®) website in the market statistics section.
The MSRB collects real-time municipal securities trade data, as well as primary market and secondary market disclosures. In addition to making the data and disclosures available for free on EMMA and compiling quarterly and annual statistics, the MSRB conducts independent research and analysis to support understanding of market trends. See research and market data publications from the MSRB.
The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) protects and strengthens the municipal bond market, enabling access to capital, economic growth, and societal progress in tens of thousands of communities across the country. The MSRB fulfills this mission by creating trust in our market through informed regulation of dealers and municipal advisors that protects investors, issuers and the public interest; building technology systems that power our market and provide transparency for issuers, institutions, and the investing public; and serving as the steward of market data that empowers better decisions and fuels innovation for the future. The MSRB is a self-regulatory organization governed by a board of directors that has a majority of public members, in addition to representatives of regulated entities. The MSRB is overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Congress.
