bonds

By Niels Jensen The Absolute Return Letter, December 2012 “It’s one thing to have an opinion on the macro, but something very different to act as if it’s correct.” -Howard Marks, Oaktree Capital Management It can be a frustrating, and…

By Marc Chandler Greece has had trouble implementing the structural reforms demanded in exchange for aid.  The large and rising debt/GDP ratio is also a function of the larger than officially (Troika) expected contraction in the Greek…

Three years on, I remain absolutely convinced that deflation, driven primarily by consumers eager to repair their balance sheets, will be a powerful force for many years to come but, at the same time, I must admit that I see worrying signs…

Moody's issued the following statement in downgrading Spain's sovereign credit rating outlook to negative. Moody's Investors Service has today confirmed the Kingdom of Spain's Baa3 government bond rating and assigned a negative outlook to…

I actually thought about doing the daily on the Wells Fargo fraud 'without fraudsters' meme because it really captures the problem with regulation of our financial system but that is a policy issue. Instead, I want to focus on a macro…

Bill Gross has admitted that he has started buying Spanish and Italian debt. That's quite a turnaround given he had been saying earlier that he wouldn't touch their sovereign debt with a ten-foot barge pole. So the question is why. And the…

This crisis has broken a lot of economic taboos, with central banks buying up assets and expanding their balance sheets in a desperate effort  to reflate a debt-laden private sector. The goal is to maintain economic growth, even at the risk…

By Sober Look High Yield corporate loans (sometimes also called "institutional", "syndicated", "leveraged", "par", or "bank" loans) continue to be in high demand. And it's not only hedge funds and CLOs (see post) who like this product.…

By Marc Chandler The Bank of Japan did not disappoint and joined the ECB and Federal Reserve in taking new and non-traditional measures.The BOJ did practically everything that we outlined yesterdayand justified its move by downgrading its…

By Sober Look As an example of how frothy fixed income markets have become, Reynolds did a $3.25 billion HY issuance today. They repaid a great deal of existing debt, but also took half a billion of cash for general purposes - in effect…