Displaying items by tag: bonds

(New York)

The bond market is a powder keg that may have only started to explode, says ING. “The bond market has been sitting on a powder keg since last week. Attitude towards duration among fixed income investors has grown cautious, to put it mildly”, says Padhraic Garvey, regional head of research for the Americas at ING. “In this context, we do not blame investors for exiting at the first sign of a sell-off”, he continued.

FINSUM: Investors are currently terrified about inflation and it is hitting Treasury yields and tech stocks squarely on the chin. Our opinion is these fears are overblown and this is a market overreaction, especially as it regards tech stocks. These stocks are losing despite the fact that underlying fundamentals strongly favor the growth of tech earnings.

(New York)

Treasury yields have risen significantly over the last few weeks. So much so that equities have been absolutely hammered. This has stoked a lot more interested in bonds generally because yields are rising back to more palatable levels. However, thus far, corporate bonds have been getting wounded during the Treasury yield surge. Top bond indexes, like the SPDR Bloomberg Barclays High Yield Bond ETF and the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF, have each seen major selloffs, with over 1% losses in a single day. Many analysts think that the rise in yields may curtail some corporate debt issuance.

FINSUM: So the immediate view for corporate debt is bearish, but in the medium term it is much brighter. As yields stabilize at higher levels there will be stronger investor demand, and coupled with less issuance, you will have a tight market.

(New York)

The muni market is in a very interesting place. Despite the overall erosion of credit quality for municipalities since the pandemic began, demand for munis is at an all-time high and returns have been great. Yields are very low, but until very recently, they still offered a substantial benefit over Treasuries. All of this has coincided with a major change to the space: the infusion of institutional investors. For decades, the muni space has been dominated by HNW individuals and their advisors, but over the last couple years, institutional buying has been rising strongly. According to a study by an industry body “Over the last decade, customer purchases of fixed-rate, tax-exempt municipal securities of $100,000 or less decreased by 46%, the MSRB found. Meanwhile, institutional-sized purchases of over $1 million increased 46% in the same time period”. “Most of the large retail managers have moved clients from traditional, transactional, retail accounts into discretionary platforms like SMAs … The firm itself then makes the allocation decisions and is, therefore, less responsible for making sure that the client understands their investment decision”, said Matt Fabian, partner at Municipal Market Analytics.

FINSUM: This is actually good news for all involved—retail investors and advisors included (in a broad sense)—as it improves liquidity and tightens spreads.

(New York)

Inflation concerns are on the rise. The Fed has reacted with large unprecedented moves to the Covid-19 recession. The Biden administration is...View the full story on our partner Magnifi’s site

Two junk bond indices, Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Corporate High Yield Index and ICE BofA US High Index Yield, hit record lows both dipping to about 4%...view the full story on our partner Magnifi's site