Tag Archives: S&P 500 Bond Index
S&P 500 Companies Issued USD 775 Billion of Bonds in 2017
2017 was the sixth consecutive year of record U.S. corporate bond issuances, as companies continued to take advantage of the accommodative environment created by low interest rates and strong investor demand. As measured by the S&P 500® Bond Index, 325 companies came to market for a total of over USD 775 billion in 2017. Approximately…
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Investing in the U.S. Corporate Bond Market From an Asian Perspective
As Asian market participants have become more aware of the importance of portfolio diversification, they have been paying more attention to the U.S. corporate bond market. The S&P 500 Bond Index seeks to measure the broad and relatively liquid U.S. corporate bond market, and it is designed to be a corporate-bond counterpart to the iconic…
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Rieger Report: Munis Show Their Power in Low Rate Environment
The 2017 low interest rate environment has created a wonderful example of the power of tax-exempt bonds. On a nominal return basis, investment grade corporate bonds tracked in the S&P 500 Investment Grade Corporate Bond Index have outperformed tax-exempt bonds tracked in the S&P National AMT-Free Municipal Bond Index. By considering the tax implications, using…
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Rieger Report: A Tale of Two Bond Markets
The U.S. corporate and municipal bond markets seem to be neck and neck in total return performance for the first three quarters of 2017. However, there are distinct characteristics of both of these markets that have played a key role and could cause the performance to vary significantly going forward. The intent of this blog post…
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Under Armour Falters, but Consumer Discretionary Stays Positive
The sports apparel and footwear company Under Armour recently experienced a highly publicized loss of stock value, based on a couple of missteps. The first misstep was falling short of Wall Street’s earning expectations, which caused multiple brokerage firms to downgrade their stock recommendations. The second was inaccurate forecasting of the company’s revenue; it only…
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Try a TIPS Mixer in Your Equities Cocktail
As product manager of the S&P STRIDE Indices, I sometimes find myself extolling the virtues of Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), which I believe are an underappreciated asset class. When inflation is relatively tame, people often ask why they should think about TIPS. The answer is that TIPS don’t hedge expected inflation—that’s already priced in. TIPS…
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Rieger Report: Energy Sector Helps Drive Market
The recent oil price rally has pushed the energy sector upward in both the equity and bond markets. In the second quarter so far, the S&P 500 Energy Index (equity) has returned over 9.1% in total return and the S&P 500 Energy Corporate Bond Index has returned over 7.3%. Meanwhile, the broader indices have seen more modest returns: the S&P 500 Bond Index (the debt…
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Great Performance by High Yield, One Time or Early Signs?
As with the weather for the northern hemisphere, the U.S. high-yield market seems to be making a comeback. The 0.54% return in February for the S&P U.S. Issued High Yield Corporate Bond Index appears to be the green shoot of return for high-yield bonds. March 2016 followed the prior month’s gain with a blossom of…
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The Rieger Report: Junk Bond Risk Realized as Credit Spreads Jump
The relentless drive for yield has caught up with U.S. high yield bond investors. Junk bond holders have been beaten up by the one risk they did not want to see: credit spreads widening. High yield bonds have seen compressed yields for some time as the relentless drive for yield had shifted flows toward yield producing…
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Looking for Incremental Yield
Over the past few years, corporations have taken advantage of the low interest rate environment and have thereby increased the size of the corporate bond market considerably. Many of these bonds, however, are subject to the effects of rising interest rates. In fact, anticipation of this change in interest rates alone has already started to…
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