CIF News and Press, MFS Intermediate High Income Fund From 07/21/21

Since last November’s vaccine news, financial markets have been "hanging ten" on a swell of cyclical, value and small-cap stocks, and rising Treasury yields. Crosswinds started to grow in the second quarter, however, as economic and inflation data ran hot: rising yields stalled...

We’ve moved past the early-cycle environment that predominated risk taking in 2020, post the pandemic lows, and we’re moving really into a mid-cycle environment, which tends to be constructive for risk. This mid-cycle environment is still going to be expansionary, albeit...

The US high yield market has seen a strong comeback since its panic-driven downturn at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. But as today’s economic recovery gathers steam, a new fear has seized investors: rising bond yields. Bonds are sensitive to interest-rate movements, and in...

Growth-oriented asset classes are likely to shine, but not equally. Above-trend growth is a supportive environment of risky assets like equities or credit. On valuation grounds, equities are looking a little cheaper. Geraldine Sundstrom and Erin Browne discuss PIMCO’s views...

Longer-term bond yields have fallen recently, seeming to indicate that investors believe that economic growth is not that strong and that inflation will not be a major factor. This attitude shows up in the flattening of the Treasury yield curve, which now projects that future short-te...

We review CEF market valuation and performance over the past week and highlight recent events. We take a look at the pattern of the most recent drawdown in the CEF market. And discuss two CEF terminations, action in BlackRock coverage numbers, Eaton Vance tender offers and more. ...

Within the non-investment grade credit markets, issuer default rates are an important driver of market and portfolio performance. We believe 2020 ended the credit cycle that began following the global financial crisis, with 2021 marking the start of a new cycle. The duration of th...

During much of last quarter, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model indicated an annual rate over 10% for the second quarter, but last Friday, they downgraded their estimate to the lowest number we’ve seen since the quarter began - an annual pace of just 7.8%, down from +8.6% on Jul...

Risk-adjusted performance for the Global Market Index (GMI) continued to push higher in June, based on the annualized Sharpe ratio for a rolling ten-year window via monthly data. GMI’s 10-year SR increased to 0.84, the highest in 18 months. GMI is an unmanaged, market-value...

4 out of 23 CEF sectors positive on price and 1 out of 23 sectors positive on NAV last week. ACP's rights offering was fully subscribed, causing a -3% NAV hit. BST's rights offering is ongoing, what to do for investors. FSLF will liquidate in another Saba victory, a slim arbit...