S&P enters fixed income with new index

Standard & Poor’s this week entered the U.S. fixed-income arena with the launch of a National Municipal Bond index, the first in a series, said S&P spokesman David Guarino. The NMBI was designed as an investible index supporting ETFs and other investments in the municipal bond market. As a market value-weighted gauge of the performance of the investment-grade, tax-exempt U.S. municipal bond market, the index covers about 3,000 bonds, with a total market value of $305.4 billion.