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Europe’s Junk Bond Bubble Has Finally Burst

Earlier this week, the euphoria over US high yield bonds hit new post-crisis highs when amid a sharp slowdown in supply, a rise in the oil price and generally solid economic conditions, insatiable buyers of junk sent the Bloomberg Barclays Corporate high yield spread to the lowest since before the financial crisis, dropping as low as 303bps, the tightest level since late 2007 before drifting somewhat wider during the late week bond rout.

Yet while the US high yield market remains remarkably resilient in the face of sharply higher yields, the same can not be said of European junk bonds where the bubble may have finally burst.

As Bank of America’s Barnaby Martin writes in his latest research note, in stark contrast to shrinking US spreads, European high-yield spreads have blown out by 70bp wider, with total returns just +13bp, a far cry from the average annual returns of +11% observed over the last decade. Putting this dramatic reversal in context, at the start of the year Euro HY spreads were 80bp tighter than US spreads. Now they are 35bp wider, in large part due to the deterioration in the Italian backdrop, concerns about the end of the ECB’s QE and the recent deterioration in the European economy.

As Martin shows in the chart below, “one has to go back to late 2012 to find that last time that Euro HY spreads were this wide to US spreads.” Also note the variance in quality: 41% of the US HY market is single-B versus just 24% in Europe.

What has prompted this curious reversal in the fates of the European and US junk bond markets? According to Martin, a key theme for European risk assets in general is that Quantitative Tightening by the Fed has made simple “cash” in the US a competitive asset class again.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Credit Investors Are Suddenly Extremely Worried About Central Banks

Credit Investors Are Suddenly Extremely Worried About Central Banks

On one hand, credit investors have never had it better with IG credit spread at record tights and junk bond yields sliding to 3 year lows

On the other, and this is linked to the above, they have never been more nervous, and as the latest Bank of America credit investor survey shows, more worried about the Fed in general, and “Quantitative Failure” in particular.

But why, if as so many claim, the Fed has nothing to do with the the return of risk assets? Ignore that, it’s rhetorical.

As BofA’s Barnaby Martin writes, August’s survey shows a marked change in the Wall of Worry, in which “Quantitative Failure” has now emerged as investors’ top concern (23%), up materially from June’s reading (6%). The reason for the sudden spike in central bank fears is that Investors say that a backdrop of the ECB ending QE next year, while inflation remains sub-par, has the potential to rattle the market’s confidence.

The chart above shows that at the top of the Wall of Worry for both high grade and high yield investors are:

  • “Quantitative Failure”, “bubbles in credit” and “rising yields”
  • Interestingly, almost no investor worries now about “populism” or “low liquidity”
  • Bubbles in credit still features among the top worries, but is well down from June’s reading (in high-grade it has fallen from 33% to 21%)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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