PCF News and Press, High Income Securities Fund From 01/26/19

There were no major U.S. Federal Bank speeches this week, so let's dive into the market overall, starting with corporates. CCC yields (in blue) widened sharply between 10/18 and 12/18, rising about 425 basis points (left scale). Spreads have tightened a bit since then, coming down to about 1...

By Kathy A Jones We ended 2018 with a cautious outlook. Our concerns centered on the effect of the Federal Reserve's policy tightening on the economy and the market's appetite for risk, at a time when valuations for bonds were high. We suggested a cautious approach to riskier areas of the ...

By Kevin Flanagan, Senior Fixed Income Strategist; and Josh Shapiro, CFA, Quantitative Strategist One of the more noteworthy stories in the U.S. fixed income arena as 2018 came to a close was the visible reversal in fortune for the high-yield ((HY)) corporate bond market. Not coincidentall...

High Income Securities Fund (NYSE: PCF) (the “Fund”), formerly known as Putnam High Income Securities Fund, today announced that the following two proposals presented at a special meeting of shareholders held on January 22, 2019 were approved: To change the nature of the ...

"Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength." - Charles Spurgeon British clergyman Watching with interest the historical defeat of Prime Minister Theresa May relating to Brexit, in conjunction with the Chinese central bank injecting a net 560 bil...

After screaming higher towards the end of 2018 right up through the first couple of days of 2019, high yield spreads have come crashing back down to earth in the last two weeks, falling from a high of 544 basis points (bps) on 1/3 to 440 bps through Thursday. At their highs two weeks ago, spre...

In this three-part series, Matt Tucker overturns some commonly held assumptions about the relationship between interest rates and bond returns. Here, he examines what 30 years of falling rates actually meant for bond investors. One comment you often hear these days is how lucky bond market...

By Matthew Sheridan Bond strategies that balance interest-rate and credit risk struggled in 2018. Is this time-tested approach past its prime? Hardly. We think investors will need to blend exposure to both to generate income and limit risk in 2019. Pairing high-yield corporate bonds and ...

By Cooper J. Howard There's an old joke in the bond market: "What's the difference between a high-yield bond and a junk bond?" "It's high yield when you buy it, but junk when you sell it!" Since high-yield munis - those that are rated below Baa3/BBB-, or not rated at all - were one of the ...

Mike Lanier, who has spent over 35 years in the trenches of the bond market, told me a while back that junk bonds “read like a bond but trade like a stock.” As the most volatile sector of the bond market, they offer significant opportunities to either make or lose a lot of mone...