A closer look
You thought buying the debt of your local school district was a safe, boring investment. Think again. The municipal bond market is a shadowy bazaar where retail investors get absolutely taken to the cleaners. Unlike stocks that trade openly on digital exchanges, municipal bonds are traded over-the-counter, meaning brokers can slap invisible, exorbitant markups on your purchase before you even see the receipt. It’s effectively a legal racket where Mom and Pop investors subsidize the massive profits of Wall Street middlemen just to build a local bridge.
