Visual Guide to Municipal Bonds offers step-by-step guidance to the nature and diversity of municipal securities credit structures. This valuable guide demonstrates the dependability of the overwhelming majority of municipal securities, and points out particular market sectors that may yield greater rewards, but also present greater risks.
Introduction:
The municipal securities market is widely misunder-stood by commentators, investors, issuers, regulators, legislators, and even many market professionals. In reality, the market consists of two vastly different markets. One market is traditional municipal securities that are very sound and are secure, with extremely low default risks. The other is a market of readily identifiable, much riskier securities dependent primarily upon private performance (profit and nonprofit) or issued for start-up or rapidly expanding projects. That second municipal securities market deserves signifi antly greater attention from everyone.
Municipal securities are issued by state and local governments. Despite considerable negative publicity in the media and from certain pundits, traditional municipal securities are safe. That is, they have evidenced extremely low payment default rates historically. Further, despite unarguable fiscal stress resulting from the financial crisis and from pension and other employee benefit costs, a key feature of traditional municipal securities for essential purposes is that the securities structures are strongly protective of investors. The net result is that those state and local government stresses will become burdens on the taxpayers long before they will harm investors. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that investors will suffer in the case of the traditional municipal securities. There are, however, certain municipal securities that warrant a closer look and greater rewards. This book seeks to identify many of those for you.
Contents:
- Basic Information Resources
- General Obligation Securities
- General Fund and Other Municipal Securities
- Revenue Securities
- Greater Rewards and Greater Risks
- Considerations When Buying
- Municipal Securities Pricing and Trading
- Tax Exemption of Municipal Securities
- Understanding Expert Work Products
- Municipal Securities Regulation
- Investor Questions and Answers (Q&As)
Visual Guide to Municipal Bonds By Robert Doty pdf
Raquel Gilbert (verified owner) –
Bob Doty’s book is a wonderful introduction to the arcane world of municipal bond investing from a seasoned bond market veteran. Bob dispels all the recent media “misinformation” about muni bond risk while walking you through all the basic features of the tax-exempt market. In keeping with the “Visual Guide” theme, the book is written in an easy conversational style with many colorful illustrations (key takeaway points are highlighted in brightly colored margin notes!). It should be noted that many of the illustrations are screen shots from a professional Bloomberg financial information system, which some readers may not have access to. Otherwise, this work truly belongs in every serious investor’s library.
Sloan Brandt (verified owner) –
Robert Doty’s “Visual Guide to Municipal Bonds” is well worth any reader’s time. From the beginning investor who wishes to learn the difference between corporate and municipal debt to the financial professional who needs an expert (Mr. Doty) to fill in the details and nuances of this market, this book is valuable. For me, the identification and discussion of the MSRB’s Emma database is tremendous. I hadn’t known of this information resource. After finishing the book, I dove into this database itself and found it was all that the author claimed!
Damir Huber (verified owner) –
This book is wonderful. Sit down, get comfortable, turn on the light and prepare to be treated and taught beautifully by this untiring author. Even if you are not sure you want to learn a great deal just now, give yourself the pleasure of allowing this unusual manual to draw you in to an uplifting and thorough learning experience. Attorney and author Doty draws the reader toward learning this material by teaching it to the reader thoroughly, in understandable terms, bit by bit. Never is the reader shoved beyond a point of knowledge before most pleasantly mastering it. Early in the book the reader acquires significant, valuable, building blocks of in-depth knowledge. The reader immediately looks forward to reading the next section and the next chapter. Am I ambivalent about this book? NO WAY. Thank you, Mr. Doty, for pouring this out to us.