After wreaking havoc on the municipal bond markets, Puerto Rico bonds have recently been adding value through their recovery. Bonds rallied after the latest debt restructuring deal was struck between the commonwealth and the bond holders. Additional supporting news, as mentioned in an article from Reuters,[1] was a federal court ruling affirming the budgetary powers Read more […]
General elections (president, senate, and chamber of deputies) are around the corner. The eyes of every Mexican and many people around the globe are on the Mexico-Brazil match of the World Cup—wait, that is another story. Nobody knows what the outcome of the elections will be. We have seen different events where the polls were Read more […]
The fixed income market has historically been relatively illiquid in India, as well as globally. The Indian bond market is smaller than other Asian markets like China and Korea, but it is more liquid than they are, yet it is still largely inaccessible to retail investors. The nature of trading that is almost entirely over Read more […]
Recently, S&P Dow Jones Indices published an analysis on the use of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) by U.S. insurance companies in their general accounts. This blog post provides additional details on the investments in Bond ETFs by insurance companies. The original analysis noted that of the USD 27.2 billion insurance companies invested in ETFs, companies invested Read more […]
Having broken through 2% in January 2018, the 10-year U.S. Treasury breakeven rate (as measured by the difference between the S&P U.S. Treasury Bond Current 10-Year Index and the S&P U.S. TIPS 10 Year Index) has continued to increase, reaching a YTD high of 2.18% on April 23, 2018. As of May 14, 2018, the Read more […]
February ended the longest historical monthly winning streak of 15 months for the S&P 500 (TR) that lost 3.7%. On a total return basis for the month, 10 of 11 sectors lost, which has only happened in 12 of 342 months or 3.5% of the time (all 11 lost together in 13 months for a Read more […]
Continuing the theme of rising interest rates and following up from my last blog, “With all the News of Higher Interest Rates, Don’t Forget About Floating-Rate Debt,” bond laddering is a strategy that provides increased income and the ability to adjust the stream of income in a rising-interest-rate environment. The approach is to invest in Read more […]
The story line for a number of years now has been the “search for yield” and how the recent low-interest-rate environment has been forcing investors down in credit or out the maturity curve in an effort to maintain income though adding risk. Now that interest rates have begun reversing the low-rate environment, fixed-coupon securities may Read more […]
Broad-based equity markets have been on a rollercoaster ride since Jan. 30, 2018, as market participants appear to be reassessing the impact of inflation and potential consequences from the recent tax reform. While volatility appears to be back, high-grade corporate bond spreads have tightened to levels not seen since 2007. Compared with the last episode Read more […]
Over the past five years, the more worrisome government-issued debt in Europe has made significant progress in managing the normal mechanism of higher-perceived risk equaling higher yields. The Wall Street Journal focused on Portugal’s debt in their article, “Decade of Easy Cash Turns Bond Market Upside Down”. Quantitative easing (QE) by the European Central Bank Read more […]
