Have you ever wondered how billionaires continue to get RICHER, while the rest of the world is struggling?

I study billionaires for a living. To be more specific, I study how these investors generate such huge and consistent profits in the stock markets — year-in and year-out.

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Trends Look Promising 

Detroit, with its $18 billion in debt, is the largest bankrupt municipality in the nation’s history after Federal Judge Steven W. Rhodes consented to the protection earlier this month. Under the bankruptcy protection, the city could impose cuts on pension plans (read: Municipal Bond ETFs to Watch After Detroit Bankruptcy ).

This decision is not only good news for Detroit, but it also paves way for reduced pension funding to other financially troubled cities in California, Illinois and Pennsylvania. This implies a clear win for municipal bondholders in a number of states.

Further, as the U.S. economy is showing increased confidence on a recovering housing market, healing labor market and strong retail sales data, credit quality of municipal bonds would improve, and the default rate would decline drastically in the coming months.

Though the Fed has begun to scale back the monetary stimulus, it is also still committed to keep the interest rates near zero for the near term. This could give a boost to the municipal bonds assuming rates find a stable level.

Moreover, with U.S. tax rates likely on the rise in the near future, the demand for municipal bonds will continue to increase, especially with investors in high income tax brackets. This is because these securities pay interest that is free from federal income tax, making them excellent choices for those looking to reduce their tax liabilities.

With that being said, investors seeking to tap the current opportunity of beaten down municipal bond market could make a broad play in this corner of the space with high quality bonds in their portfolio, which has a relatively low risk of default.

For these investors, we have highlighted some of the most popular muni ETFs, any of which could be interesting picks as we approach 2014. These products have a decent Zacks ETF Rank of 3 or ‘Hold’ rating:

iShares National AMT-Free Muni Bond ETF  (NYSEARCA:MUB)

This fund provides exposure to the investment-grade segment of the U.S. municipal bond market, holding a large basket of 2,191 municipal bonds across a number of states and sectors. California munis take the top spot with nearly 22% of total assets, closely followed by New York at 19%.

The product focuses on mid and long-term securities with average maturity of 6.82 years and effective duration of 7.26 years. MUB is the largest and most popular product in the national munis space with AUM of over $3 billion and solid average daily volume of more than 270,000 shares. The ETF charges 25 bps in fees per year from investors and is down nearly 3.3% in the year-to-date time frame.