HYLD News and Press, High Yield From 09/19/21

After record bond issuance in 2020 and profits hitting new highs, many companies are debating “What should we do with all this money?”. Given the limited impact to interest costs, I would expect high-quality companies to exhibit fewer bondholder-friendly spending habits....

How to achieve a respectable income without taking on too much risk. What's the right risk/yield trade-off for reasonable income? Will '80s-style inflation return? For further details see: The Great Fixed Income Challenge: Balancing Yield And Risk In A Low-Rate World

What sets the current environment apart is the broad-based nature of input-cost inflation, spanning raw materials, logistics/transportation, and labor, as well as shortages of intermediate goods such as semiconductors. Companies are leaning heavily on pricing, in addition to productiv...

Risk-adjusted performance continued to rise in August for the Global Market Index. Sharpe ratios in global markets generally are elevated. GMI represents a theoretical benchmark for the “optimal” portfolio. For further details see: Major Asset Classes | Aug...

The expected risk premium for the Global Market (GMI) ticked up in August, reaching an annualized 6.1%, slightly above the previous month’s estimate. Despite the comparatively high GMI forecast, the current estimate remains well below the index’s realized risk premium fo...

Why yields have been falling, and whether bond markets are trying to signal to any important trends to investors, particularly in light of the fact that we've seen equities reach new highs. This is a market environment, or a trading environment, that feels like people want to add dura...

The winning streak for American shares rolled on in August. US stocks rose for a seventh straight month and posted the strongest gain for the major asset classes. US bonds also lost ground in August. The Bloomberg Aggregate Bond Index slipped 0.2%, the first monthly decline for the be...

The option-adjusted-spread ((OAS)) on the investment grade or high-grade corporate bond index, is presently about 95-100 bps better than the equivalent Treasury. As of last Friday, August 27th, 2021, the BBB OAS was yielding about 104 bp’s over equivalent Treasuries, which shou...

The unprecedented demand for U.S. Treasuries at last week’s auction - even as the 10-year yield approached its 50-day moving average - speaks volumes. Yields did slip notably last Friday back below 1.3% (the day after the auction), closing below their 200-day moving average. Th...

2 things that always happen at or prior to the start of a boom-to-bust transition for the US economy. One is a clear-cut widening of credit spreads. The other is pronounced weakness in the Industrial Metals Index (GYX) relative to the gold price. There are many different credit-spread...