HIX News and Press, Western Asset High Income Fund II Inc. From 03/24/21

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 ...

Western Asset High Income Fund II Inc. (NYSE: HIX) today announced the financial position of the Fund as of January 31, 2021. Footnotes: This financial data is unaudited. The Fund files its semi-annual and annual reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“...

HIO looks attractively valued for unleveraged high-yield exposure. HIO yields 7.77% with 94% coverage, -7.89% discount. Note that the fund is not purely invested in high-yield bonds. For further details see: HIO Looks Appealing For Unleveraged High-Yield Exposure

The Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers (CPI-U) released Wednesday puts the year-over-year inflation rate at 1.68%. It is below the 3.76% average since the end of the Second World War and below its 10-year moving average, now at 1.73%. Our long-term inflation charts reach bac...

For US Treasury investors, the starting place for inflation today is tough-there's not enough inflation-adjusted yield to cushion the pain. Treasury inflation-protected securities and similar inflation-linked bonds globally will outperform comparable-maturity Treasury bonds if inflati...

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...

For investors seeking income, appreciation, or diversification benefits, fixed income strategies are core components of a well-rounded asset allocation. In particular, we are optimistic about the high yield market-and believe that the opportunities can be maximized with active, risk-c...

The high-yield CEF sector has done well though not as well as other sectors in terms of discount returns in the last month (+1.3%). The sector as a whole is near its long-term fair value with a discount of -5%. But with spreads near the pre-COVID tightest levels, there isn't much upsi...