MBIS supplies data for University of Chicago Center of Municipal Finance.
Daniel Garrett • Oct 13, 2022

MBIS data reveals muni price trends through times of crisis

We at MBIS are extremely pleased to be a data supplier for the University of Chicago Center for Municipal Finance.


MBIS bond data powers the Center's Indices for general obligation bonds for cities, counties, and school districts, providing a robust set of characteristics and prices that track bids, offers, and trades on a real-time basis. The following graph of US City General obligation bonds shows a base start of 100 starting on January 2, 2018:



As you can see, there are quite a variety of price moves among the US large cities, from the arrival of Covid concerns in the spring of 2020 where there was a sizable drop in prices, to the steady recovery through 2021. Then the extreme hit to bond prices as rates rose from the Federal Reserve raising rates in large increments of 75 basis points during 2022. Inflation threats, Ukraine, rising energy prices all have hit the economy in both equities and bonds.


The next graph of counties shows similar price movements for the same reasons.

The final graph of school districts also tells the same story.

Our data is uniquely suited for revealing these sorts of trends.  Our comprehensive universe of pre-trade bid and offer data gives a powerful tool for fine-grained analysis to both academic and market users alike.


MBIS data is available via the MBIS.com website, managed by Securities Quote Xchange, SQX.com

Press Release: MBIS Supports Municipal Finance Data Project at Univ. of Chicago

By Adam Hammond • 15 Nov, 2022
Beginning October 2022, Municipal Bond Information Services ( MBIS ) will supply data for the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago. The Center is part of the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, whose mission is to bring empirical, data-driven research to policy studies. MBIS CEO Tim Tatum commented, “It has been a pleasure to work with and support the Harris School in the area of municipal bonds and public finance.” MBIS data will power the online indices for cities, counties, and school districts , part of the Center’s Data Dashboard. According to Wesley Janson, a graduate student working on the project, "MBIS was the only place we could get comprehensive enough data for us to create this index. Because of their robust historical trading data, we were able to create an accurate measure of market sentiment towards some of the largest municipal bond issuers.” The Data Dashboard aligns with the Center’s mission to promote engagement with the financial issues faced by state and local governments both in the U.S. and globally. Janson explained, "These municipal bond indices are the backbone of our data dashboard, offering timely information to journalists, researchers, issuers, and investors. We aim to be the one-stop shop for all things municipal finance." Data from the Center’s indices have already appeared in reporting by Bloomberg and Crain’s Chicago Business . MBIS aggregates and delivers over 400,000 pre-trade bids wanted and offering daily, giving the largest set of data available today. The company was founded as a consortium of eleven municipal security trading firms who assembled to aggregate their market data. In 2022, MBIS became an independent entity headquartered in Aurora, IL.
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