- Retail investors are likely to see about twice as much in "leakage" when buying and selling municipal bonds as they do for corporate paper, according to the WSJ, and regulators - who bypassed the municipal market while helping reshape how Wall Street works - have this asset class in its their sights.
- "We spend an awful lot of time on the equities side of the market where spreads are counted in pennies - and in the muni market, spreads are counted in dollars," says SEC Commissioner Michael Piwowar.
- For their part, brokerages say munis cost more because they trade in lower volume and for smaller amounts than other securities.
- "You think of how the retail industry has gone from the local grocery store to Wal-Mart to Amazon," says a municipal bond wealth manager. "In municipal bonds, we're still shopping at the local grocery store."
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