The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) published an Investor Alert on municipal bonds. This provides a thorough background on municipal bonds and advice on investing.
There are certain risks in investing in municipal bonds. For example, the municipality issuing the municipal bonds can default, leading to the loss of some (if not all) interest and principal to the investor. This is called default risk....
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) published an Investor Alert on auction rate securities (ARS). This provides quite a thorough background on ARS, their auction mechanism and risks of failure, alternatives to ARS, and redemption and liquidity issues.
ARS are issued widely by institutions ranging from closed-end mutual funds, municipalities to student loan trusts. ARS are long-term floating rate securities whose...