HIX News and Press, Western Asset High Income Fund II Inc. From 06/22/20

So much of the mainstream financial media focuses on the stock market, and yet the corporate bond markets, and that would include securitized product and even municipal bonds, have (in my opinion) a huge information vacuum for the smaller advisor or individual investor. The corporate bond ma...

By Kevin Flanagan, Head of Fixed Income Strategy As investors continue to sort through the aftermath of the bond market turmoil we witnessed in March, questions arise as to where there are potential relative value opportunities. The first sector that comes to mind is U.S. high-yield ((HY))...

By Breakingviews Bond investors are showing an impressive willingness to help keep companies afloat amid dwindling revenue thanks to coronavirus lockdowns. So far this year firms have raised some $1.1 trillion in the U.S. high-grade bond market alone, almost as much as in all of 2019. Junk...

When last I wrote, corporate credit was trading at extreme levels only seen during two or three brief periods in the last 30 years. At the time, we were extolling the opportunity to buy credit assets at historically cheap levels, and while we could not predict where the market would bottom o...

Western Asset Corporate Loan Fund Inc. (NYSE: TLI), Western Asset Global High Income Fund Inc. (NYSE: EHI), Western Asset High Income Fund II Inc. (NYSE: HIX), Western Asset High Income Opportunity Fund Inc. (NYSE: HIO), and Western Asset Variable Rate Strategic Fund Inc. (NYSE:...

While the US equity rally has been more “slow and steady” than “big and bold” in the last couple of weeks, credit markets have been flying. In the chart below we show the spreads on CDX HY, the index of high yield credit default swaps used as a reference for junk ...

Nothing has really changed yet in terms of “style-box” returns with Growth outpacing Value and Large-Cap beating Small-Cap. Late in the week of May 222nd, The CFA Society of Chicago held a webinar with Gina Adams of Bloomberg (one of Bloomberg’s Equity Strategists), whic...

Make no mistake in your thinking. Both the bond and the equity markets are being led by the Fed. We are in a time, because of the pandemic, when both Congress and the Fed are doing whatever they think is necessary to get the American economy back on track. The Congress is tossing money up into...

Western Asset High Income Fund II Inc. (NYSE: HIX) (the “Fund”) today announced that Institutional Shareholder Services (“ISS”) and Glass Lewis & Co. (“Glass Lewis”), two of the leading independent proxy advisory firms, recommend that shareholders...

First off, a quick "hat-tip" or shout-out to Nicholas Colas and Jessica Rabe at DataTrek Research, who have been posting similar FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis) charts on the US corporate credit markets. After seeing DataTrek's credit spreads charts over the last few weeks, I went to F...