The municipal series

The Bond Buyer 20-Bond General Obligation Index: the average yield on twenty general-obligation municipal bonds of about twenty years' maturity, published weekly from 1 January 1953 to 6 October 2016. 766 observations. Then it stops.

Why it stops

The Bond Buyer discontinued the index in October 2016. FRED holds every observation it ever published and nothing after. This site draws exactly that and stops at the same date — no line is extended across the gap, and no current figure is inferred from it.

What is not available, and what that means

There is no free public feed of current municipal yields. The live municipal market is covered by the MSRB's EMMA system and by commercial index providers; both are outside what an open register can republish. So this site does not carry a current municipal number at all.

What it carries instead is the thing municipal yields are always quoted against: the Treasury curve, complete and current, at every maturity. A municipal yield is conventionally discussed as a ratio to the comparable Treasury, so the Treasury side is the half that can be published honestly — and the half that moves first.

What the series was

General obligation bonds are backed by the issuer's taxing power rather than the revenue of a particular project, which is why a GO index is the usual benchmark for the municipal market as a whole. Twenty bonds, roughly twenty years to maturity, averaged weekly. Over its 63 years it ranged from 2.26% to 13.30%.