The MSRB EMMA system is a great start to learn about required material events affecting your municipal bond portfolio. But the event notifications posted on EMMA often appear after the fact, and only expose one aspect of material changes that investors value. With a limited scope and significantly time-delayed posting, EMMA material events are aimed at risk disclosure not information advantage.
Last month, Banner Health purchased the assets of Casa Grande Regional Medical Center (CGRMC). The transaction affects CGRMC bond holders (especially since the hospital filed a bankruptcy petition after the asset sale) as well as owners of Banner Health debt. EMMA has press releases announcing the intended asset sale on December 30, 2013 and the completion of the deal on February 5.
But investors may have profited from reading a story in The Arizona City Independent five weeks earlier on November 20, 2013 detailing the hospital’s financial woes and its search for a buyer.
It is this type of expanded material event that Bitvore brings to the table for the muni investor. Although stories like the one in the Arizona City Independent are available by “Googling” – manually trying to stay on top of thousands of issuers and hundreds of material situations would require a substantial team of trained, full-time Googler's to proactively alert research analysts and portfolio managers of changing credit conditions. With its advanced filtering technology, Bitvore slices deeply through the web and social media to identify and deliver the nuggets you need to increase returns in your portfolio.
