Brian Luke
Senior Director, Head of Commodities and Real Assets, S&P Dow Jones Indices
Hedging Debt Ceiling Drama with the S&P GSCI SOFR and S&P GSCI Gold
The debt ceiling debate in Washington appears to be nearing an end. According to the U.S. Treasury, Congress has “always acted when called upon” and markets will look for them to do so for the 79th time this month. By index rule, all commodities in the S&P GSCI are traded in U.S. dollars, so the…
The “Devil’s Metal” Vanishes, Precious Metals Shine and Energy Dims: Commodities Quarterly Wrap
“Jamie ran on down to the LME, but the devil caught him there, He took Mr. Dimon’s Nickel bags and vanished in the air, Set out running but I’ll take my time, A friend of the devil is a friend of mine” -adaptation of Grateful Dead’s “Friend of the Devil” Just one year after the…
Indexing Bond and Commodity Markets in the World of the Upside Down
In the 80s nostalgia Netflix hit series “Stranger Things,” the town of Hawkins is haunted by an alternate world beneath. The protagonists battle monsters in what they call the upside down. For the first few seasons, the upside down wreaks havoc on just a few residents of Hawkins. By the last season, no one is…
Good Things Come in Threes: Muni Bonds Appear Ripe for 2023
With one month down in 2023, let’s track the performance of municipal bonds so far: as of Jan. 31, 2023, the yield for the S&P National AMT-Free Municipal Bond Index was at roughly 3% (3.02% to be exact). The total return was up about 3% for January (2.87% to be exact), putting a dent in…
Paying Dividends: Measuring Rising Income against Declining Risks in the iBoxx Fixed Income Indices
With the ZIRP world1 firmly in the rear view, the “income” in fixed income is back. As yields collapsed to record lows, income-starved investors sought alternative sources of income such as dividend strategies, which attracted record flows in related products throughout 2022. Now, with investment grade bond yields hitting as high as 6%, bonds are…
Is Fixed Income Failing? It May Be Time to Look at the Index
Last year wasn’t the best time to hold bonds. Nearly every equity market delivered solid gains in 2021, while the S&P U.S. Aggregate Bond Index fell 1.4%. Nevertheless, flows into fixed income products such as ETFs were firmly positive. The leading asset gatherer was total market-type ETFs, with one in every three dollars newly invested…
Preferred Stock and Senior Loan Solutions for Yield-Starved Investors
So far in 2021, the fixed income market certainly hasn’t been very fixed—instead posting negative returns—nor has it offered much income, with yields of just over 1%. U.S. equity and bond indices both posted strong performance in 2020, driving up asset class correlations and dropping yields to new lows. So, when the 10-year U.S. Treasury…
As ETF Fund Flows Surge, Don’t Fight the Fed’s Passive Investing Philosophy
Investing legend Marty Zweig famously declared, “don’t fight the Fed.” With the Fed now buying fixed income ETFs and fund flows of index-based ETFs surging, Marty’s advice is proving timely. In this blog post, we review key index-based product performance leading up to the Fed’s intervention and detail the ETF fund flows that followed. Back…
Liquidity Impacts on Fixed Income ETFs and Passive Investing
Equity markets have fared reasonably well aided by liquidity in ETFs, as my colleague Craig Lazzara highlights. Steep discounts to net asset values (NAVs) on popular fixed income ETFs are bringing an onslaught of doomsday projections. But while the signs of stress are evident, it’s important to decouple the dysfunction of the bond market from…
Fixed Income in Stressful Times
For those wondering what role fixed income would have in their portfolio at record-low yields, they had to wait just one week. On Friday, Feb. 21, 2020, we hit a record-low yield for the 30-year Treasury, as the S&P U.S. Treasury Bond Current 30-Year Index yield fell to 1.92%. The next week, the Dow Jones…