US high-yield investors are seeing the recent widening in bond spreads as a buying opportunity in both the secondary and primary markets, where issuers are offering the best new-issue concessions in months. The yield-to-worst on the Barclays high-yield index has shot above 6% for the first time in a year, reaching 6.26% on September 29, before retreating to 6.08%. But that is still way above the record low of 4.83% hit back in June before volatility really started to play havoc in the market as billions of outflows hit the asset class. A trickling of cash back into high-yield was short-lived, with four out of the past five weeks seeing outflows for a net amount of US$3.903bn, according to Lipper. Buy and hold investors are largely unfazed.
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