HIX News and Press, Western Asset High Income Fund II Inc. From 07/21/21

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...

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...

Only funds with yields over 7%, coverage higher than 85% and trading at under a +5% premium are considered. Top lists of discount, yield, DxY and DxYxZ are given. The top DxY funds are AOD, ISD and GHY. ISD and GHY are relatively conservative high-yield funds with decent credi...

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...

The expected risk premium for the Global Market Index (GMI) resumed an upward drift in June, rising to an annualized 6.0%. The current risk premium forecast for GMI - 6.0% - suggests that multi-asset-class strategies will generate lower returns relative to results posted in recent yea...

MSCI US REIT Index rallied 2.7% in June, which marks an impressive run of eight consecutive monthly increases. The Russell 3000 Index jumped 2.5% in June, the fifth straight monthly advance. Comparing GMI to US stocks and bonds shows that global asset allocation remains competitiv...