FHY News and Press, First Trust Strategic High Income Fund II of Beneficial Interest From 06/02/21

The major asset classes delivered across-the-board gains for a second month in a row in May. Everything apart from cash was up last month, led by a sizzling rally in foreign inflation-linked government bonds. The FTSE Russell World Inflation Index ex-US surged 4.0% last month, the...

The bond market is partying like it's 1999, and there is no end in sight. Despite wide spreads and tight spreads, bonds still need to be bought by insurance companies, money managers, university endowments and other institutions that have ratings partially based upon their bond positi...

The first quarter of 2021 brought what the Asset Allocation Committee expected, and as it looks to the next six to 12 months, it faces two questions. Do we think the economy will overheat, pushing bond yields to levels that unsettle equity markets or even force central banks to stifle...

With a broad-based economic reopening coming closer into focus, investors are planning for the next stage in the cycle. Our K2 Advisors team believes geographical, asset class and sector rotations will be key to driving returns over the next 12 months. We expect hedge-fund manager...

Higher yields have so far left the credit market largely unscathed, but they have changed the balance of opportunity. Against this year's early-cycle background, we anticipate further tailwinds for the lower-rated, more economically sensitive part of the credit market. Right now, ...

Considering the major jump in volatility at the end of February, for our latest survey we sought an updated consensus over the managers' thoughts on the speed of economic recovery. Additionally, we asked what their inflation expectations going forward are, and whether higher rates in ...

One of the interesting things during the period when Treasury yields were rising was that all of the risk assets were compressing against Treasuries. There is virtually no spread in any of the credit indexes that pays the buyer for the credit risk. The spreads are just off historic lo...

For credit markets, the returns just kept coming in 2020 once the Fed stepped in with its strong policy support in late March. With strong returns in the fourth quarter, both investment grade and high yield corporate markets in the U.S. ended the year with positive returns over equiva...

Rising rates are such a problem for gold bullion that gold bullion and major gold stocks are where they were before the COVID pandemic crashed the U.S. stock market at this time last year. In other words, they have wiped out all the pandemic gains. The bid in the dollar is significant...

The recent rise in Treasury yields has spooked the equity markets. This is obvious from the recent performance of the bond markets as compared to the stock markets. Inflation is not the cause of this rise, but rather a combination of the stimulus measures, a rebounding economy, our CO...