Not even a year removed from a crash in risky bonds, investors are already reaching for yield again. Bond issuers are putting payment in kind (PIK) provisions into newly issued junk bonds. PIK deals allow bond issuers to make interest payments with more debt. That’s like applying for a new credit card to make the minimum payment on an existing card. With 10-year Treasury bond yields under 1% and the expectation that the Fed no longer has any red lines on bailing out investors, the reach for yield is back on. The FT has more: Private equity firms are testing investors’ appetite for … [Read more...]

Today we have a situation where the Fed has forced individual investors with life-time savings to subsidize corporate buybacks, acquisitions, and Wall Street banking industry borrowing and speculating. It’s what I call de facto robbing and stealing. In reality, the Fed is nothing more than a private club to favor corporate and banking elites. When the Federal Reserve was first established in 1913, Congress directed it to “furnish an elastic currency, to afford means of rediscounting commercial paper” and to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the U.S. The Fed’s duties … [Read more...]

Joe Rennison and Eric Platt report for the Financial Times on investors' demand for bonds from blue-chip companies. They write: Bonds sold since March by blue-chip US companies including Northrop Grumman, Intel and Coca-Cola have surged in value, as investors scrambled to get hold of the unusually high coupons offered during the most intense phase of the pandemic. Intel’s $1bn bond maturing in 2060, launched just before the US Federal Reserve announced sweeping measures to support the corporate bond market, has soared to more than 144 cents on the dollar from its sale price of just over 98 … [Read more...]

The WSJ reports on new work that shows historically investment-grade bonds have beaten stocks in 40% of ten year periods. What’s more, in many 10-year periods the return on bonds is only about a percentage point less than the return on stocks. With Treasury bond yields nearing rock bottom levels, it would seem to be a cinch for stocks to beat Treasuries over the coming decade, but today’s historically lofty stock valuations make the calculus more complicated. And if you are willing to venture beyond the safety of Treasuries, the return opportunities in corporate bonds aren’t as depressed as … [Read more...]

With Congress considering yet another stimulus bill with the price tag measured in trillions, Victor Davis Hanson offers a sobering reminder of what comes next. The deficit is expected to exceed $4 trillion soon and the national debt may climb to $30 trillion or nearly $100,000 for every American. How will the United States sustain this level of debt, let alone repay it? VDH offers five ugly choices. Inflation looks like the most expedient option for the political class. Negative Interest Rates One, Americans would be forced to live with permanent near-zero interest rates, or … [Read more...]

The Federal Reserve has destroyed investors' sense of risk. Bloomberg's Davide Scigliuzzo, Craig Torres, and Lisa Lee explain how no junk debt is too risk for the Fed. They write: Long before the coronavirus pandemic would bring business to a standstill all across America, Surgery Partners Inc., a sprawling network of outpatient clinics, already had its share of financial problems. This was no secret on Wall Street. Surgery Partners’s majority owner, the buyout firm Bain Capital, had loaded so much debt onto the company’s books that when it went to the market last year to refinance … [Read more...]

For much of the last five years, junk bonds have outpaced short-term investment-grade bonds. Ultra-low interest rates, quantitative easing, and a central bank set on rescuing investors during every episode of market turbulence emboldened investors to reach for yield in high-yield bonds. We advised against such a strategy. Risk must always be evaluated before return. Turns out, easy money can’t cure coronavirus. The iShares High-Yield Bond index just gave up more than 5-years worth of return advantage over the Vanguard Short-term Investment Grade fund. It only took a couple of weeks for … [Read more...]

Yesterday you read that the coronavirus was causing panic in markets, sending stock prices plummeting. Below you can see that, while DJIA stock prices fell 3.54% in yesterday's turmoil, bond prices (as measured by the Ryan/NASDAQ Laddered Treasury Index) rose 1.05%, a difference of 4.59% over stocks. If you don't understand the value of bonds, this is it. Bonds are a counterbalancer in your portfolio against the volatility of stocks. Bonds will always matter to you, especially when the going gets tough. If you are just beginning to invest in bonds, consider a laddering strategy. And … [Read more...]

Joe Rennison reports for the Financial Times that "fallen angel" downgrades could test the high yield debt market. He writes: When S&P withdrew General Motors’ top-quality credit rating in May 2005, sending $41.5bn of debt crashing into junk territory and creating the largest ever “fallen angel”, it triggered the biggest sell-off in corporate bond markets since the dotcom bust. Along with the simultaneous downgrade of Ford, which remains the second-largest fallen angel after its $40.8bn of debt was docked, the bedrock of corporate America shook. “It is not just they that have a … [Read more...]