High Yield

Without a doubt, retail has fallen in love with corporate bonds.  Fund flows were originally into mutual funds, and have shifted more and more into the ETF’s.  The ETF’s are gaining a greater institutional following as well – their daily trading volumes cannot be ignored, and for the high yield space, many hedgers believe it mimics their portfolio far better than the CDS indices. The investment grade market looks extremely dangerous right now as the rationale for investing in corporate bonds – spreads are cheap – and the investment vehicles – yield based products. With corporate bonds spreads (investment grade and high yield) already reflecting a lot of the move in equities, it will be critical to see how well they can withstand the pressure from the treasury markets.

Since the Greek PSI deal was announced early on Friday morning, European credit markets have been underperforming European equity markets quite materially. Friday in the US held up in a narrow range for a short-period but once we discovered that the CAC was in fact a credit event thanks to ISDA, the US credit market deteriorated rapidly and remains weak as US equity indices are holding stable. We wonder, with CBs seemingly on the sidelines for now and fall-out from the Greek deal remaining uncertain, whether credit is once again reflecting market angst more efficiently than the marginal robot in equity markets.

It will come as no surprise to any reader that volumes in general are dismal. This leads inevitably to the question of just how liquid markets are in general. This may not be a critical question for mom-and-pop buying some IBM or CAT at the margin but for institutional investors it is critical to the decision to enter a position. Pairing off reward expectations with risk concerns tends to focus too much on volatility and too little on liquidity and by looking at daily market turnover and the bid-offer spread of each asset class, UBS finds taking liquidity into account can make a huge difference to performance (and risk-appetite). Unsurprisingly, the most liquid assets are large cap equities and US Treasuries. The least liquid assets include various fixed income securities, and in particular high yield credit. Perhaps this goes a long way to explaining why US Treasuries have maintained their strength and why large cap equities have been so strong relative to credit markets (a topic we have discussed at length) as money finds its 'easiest' hole to fill and thanks to liquidity concerns, high yield credit investors remain more pragmatic entrants to an ever-inflating bubble of liquidity (as exits will be small and crowded at the first sign of tightening). We suspect the increasing dispersion between the most and least liquid securities in each asset class will likely feed on itself as fewer funds are willing to 'earn' an 'illiquidity' premium given the bigger binary risks facing all markets.

ETF fund flows have been a uniformly positive source of capital into U.S. risk markets in 2012. Looking a little deeper at the decidedly 'risk-on' flows, Nic Colas (of Convergex Group) notes perhaps their most provocative feature has been their high degree of net concentration.  When you look at the entire “ETF Ecosystem” of listed funds, just 6 funds represent all the net gains in assets over the past month ($5.4 billion in net inflows) – LQD, HYG and JNK in fixed income, VWO in emerging markets, VXX in risk, and GLD in commodities. With 1,433 different ETFs listed on U.S. markets now, Colas likens the comprehension of the $1.2 trillion in AUM across these ETFs to how well you know your spouse as we know ETF flows are important (just like a wedding anniversary date or what day the trash is picked up at home) but with their still-evolving proliferation it seems a daunting task to keep tabs on them. All in all, this brief analysis points to more of a pause in investor sentiment rather than the opening for a more full-blown correction in the coming weeks.

We have been warning that the stocks of the major US financials are on weak ground for a few weeks as credit (and implied vol) markets for the TBTFs had been underperforming notably. Today saw the financials ETF, XLF, have the largest down day in three months (dropping over two standard deviations), breaking its uptrend and heading for its 50DMA. As volumes in stocks and stock futures surged to year-highs, we note that the major financials were much worse hit than the broad ETF, roughly separated into 3 groups: Good (JPM, WFC), Bad (GS, C, BAC, GE), and Ugly (MS). While the market is 'only' down around 2%, it is worth noting that Financials and Energy stocks are back at five-week lows, while Industrials and Materials are back at two-month lows as the growthium hope fades. Risk was very highly correlated on the downswing today and along with significantly higher than average volume suggests more broad de-risking than idiosyncratic profit-taking as some would like to suggest. Commodities made headlines as Silver is now down over 5% on the week but Gold stabilized for much of the post-European close session around $1675. The vol term structure snapped flatter today, catching short-dated premium sellers fingers as it tends to, ripping to its flattest in 3 weeks as VIX jumped almost 3 vols to around 21% (back above its 50DMA for the first time since Thanksgiving), with its biggest rise in three months.

While not quite as impressive as the 02/15 sell-off in terms of volume or size, today's weakness in Apple's stock price was the 3rd largest drop in 3 months as we note implied vol pushed up once again mimicking the pattern from mid-Feb as the stock lost over $21.5 from high to low in a very flash-crash style around 1110ET. As both realized volatility and implied volatility increase, perhaps some of the 200+ hedge funds will allocate some risk budget away from the Apple or change mandates so that their bogeys are AAPL. Apple's weakness weighed on most other high-beta assets with High yield credit lower and only Utilities and Staples managing a positive close among S&P sectors (financials were mixed in stocks but CDS were wider). Somewhat interestingly, Treasuries sold off all day and modestly steepened and while FX markets drifted very modestly higher for the USD after the European close (despite some overnight JPY strength - risk-off), ES (the e-mini S&P futures contract) synced back with an underperforming CONTEXT (broad risk asset proxy) into the close as WTI regained $107 (along with strength in commodities) and AUDJPY improvement.

The ever-so-popular high-yield bond ETF, HYG, is suffering its biggest 3-day drop since Thanksgiving as higher beta assets are underperforming and the up-in-quality and up-in-capital-structure trade gathers pace post LTRO 2. Even with last week's ex-divi date, we note that this loss of the last 2-3 days wipes out the yield that was 'reached for' of the last 2-3 months. It seems all too easy to buy high-yield bonds when they are on the rise but underlying that ETF is a portfolio of 'junk' assets - some better and some worse obviously - that are increasingly being driven top-down by the fast-money action in this newfound ETF's liquidity (as dealer inventories dwindle). This leaves them prone to just-as-fast exits as the secondary high yield bond market remains 'illiquid' away from benchmark size and ETF-bound assets providing little underlying 'pricing' evidence of market value. This is the largest underperformance of the high-yield market relative to the equity market since the recent rally began.

All you need to read.

Today for the first time ever Greek 10 year bonds slide to below 20% of par (5.9% of 2022 dropped to 19.145 cents) as expected some time ago, as increasingly the revulsion to post reorg bonds gets greater and greater courtesy of that now meaningless cash coupon of 2% through 2015. When considering that the country will redefault within a year, it explains why nobody has any interest in holding Greek paper even assuming there is an EFSF bill sweetener. Also, today's ISDA decision did not help. What is most amusing is that as of this morning, the country's 1 Year bonds hit an all time high yield of 920.2%. Well, if Greek bonds crossing 100% just 5 months ago was not quite attractive, perhaps 1000% will. At this rate we expect said threshold to cross some time today.

After 22 crosses yesterday, and 12 more today, the Dow managed to close above 13000. Transports were lower but less so on Oil's modest retracement (though the Brent-WTI spread remained around $15). While stocks closed modestly higher, volatility and correlation markets remained considerably higher than would be expected and along with quite considerable relative weakness in HYG (the high yield bond ETF) into the close as well as a clear up-in-quality rotation was evident as investment grade credit outperformed notably (not exactly a high-beta risk-on shift). Apple's meteoric rise helped drag Tech to first place overall today and also YTD followed closely (YTD) by financials both up around 14%. The last week or so of slow bleed higher in stocks has notably not been led by a short-squeeze in general - based on our index of most shorted names - but as is becoming more and more clear, divergences (and canaries) are appearing all over the place but we suspect can be traced back to Apple in many cases for its over-weighting impact. Treasuries slid lower (higher in yield) after Europe's close but remain better on the week and modestly flatter across the curve. Aside from a hiccup around the macro data this morning, EUR pushed higher all day against the USD shifting into the green by the US close as JPY stabilized. The USD weakness helped Copper and Gold leak higher but Silver was the massive winner, now up an impressive 4.3% since Friday and 30% YTD as WTI lost $107 and is now down over 3% on the week. The IG rotation coupled with vol decompression makes some (nervous) sense heading into the LTRO results but it seems the new safe-haven trade is Apple (whose option prices are now the most complacent since early 2009).

Bill Gross' monthly letters are always a fresh source of jovial imagery, although the bond king may have outdone himself in his latest monthly letter which collapses the principles of investing onto the football field: "My point about pigskin offense and defense is the perfect metaphor for the world of investing as well. Offensively minded risk takers in the markets have historically been the ones who have dominated the headlines and won the hearts of that beautiful gal (or handsome guy).... Canton, however, has an approximately equal number of defensive in addition to offensively positioned inductees, so there must be a universally acknowledged role for both sides of the scrimmage line. What fan can forget Mean Joe Greene, Deion Sanders or Mike Ditka? The old, now politically incorrect showtune laments that “you gotta be a football hero, to fall in love with a beautiful girl,” but football and any of life’s heroes can play on either side of the line, it seems." And it only gets better. While at its heart Gross' latest is merely yet another lamentation against the confines of the financially suppressive regime that arises from ZIRP and ends with what many expect is a whimper (when in reality they all forget to factor in the facility of hitting the CTRL+P keys as many times as necessary), the flourish of abandon this time around is palpable. We would not be surprised to soon see Gross hang up his offensive (and defensive) jersey, and sit back and enjoy the coming lunacy from a distance (but hopefully not before he allocates just a little to the Ron Paul SuperPAC).

NYSE volume was the 3rd lowest of the year so far (while ES was just below average) as stocks leaked lower all day to small net losses by the close. Financials led the drop in stocks as they start to catch up the credit market weakness we have been pointing to for over a week but while HY (the high yield credit spread index) continues to underperform (and stocks following at a lower beta), IG (investment grade credit spread index) modestly outperforms (the up-in-quality rotation) but HYG (the high-yield bond ETF) surged today into a world of its own once again. We suspect this is driven by 'arbitrage' flows between HY's recent richness and HYG's cheapness (as well as potential HY new issue impacts). Gold (and to a lesser extent Silver) was the story of the day as it exploded (perhaps on the Greek gold-collateral news) over $1780 intraday (now up over $55 in the last 3 days) although the USD did nothing (FX was quiet with JPY inching lower and EUR small higher as DXY leaked higher on the day to -0.25% on the week). The rest of the commodity complex jumped also (with WTI losing ground into the close even as Brent kept going - suggesting the spread decompression was in play). Treasuries rallied from early in the European day with yields dropping 6-8bps from the peaks and shifting the entire curve into the green for the week now (10y and 30Y around 1bps lower in yield). ES couldn't get significantly above VWAP today and CSFB's fear index (which tracks equity option skews) is at record highs which both suggest a preference to sell/cover is appearing (even as VIX diverged modestly from stocks today with implied correlation rising).

Volumes were below average but not dismally so as the sad 6.5pt drop in ES (the e-mini S&P 500 futures contract) from Sunday's open to today's close is incredibly the largest drop since 12/28 [correction: 2/10 saw a slightly larger open to close drop] on a day when the problems of Greece are now apparently behind us and Dow 13,000 means that retail will come storming back. High yield credit underperformed (and investment grade outperformed) as stocks drifted to Friday's lows suggesting some up-in-quality rotation (though HYG - the high-yield bond ETF - was strong most of the day). Financials ended the day red with the majors losing significant ground off intraday highs (and CDS widening still further) but the bigger story of the day was the rise in commodities with Copper (RRR cut?) and Silver outperforming (up 3.3% since Friday's close already), WTI managing $106 intraday and Gold touching $1760 (both up over 2% from Friday). What was surprising was the dramatic outperformance with the USD which weakened by 0.44% from Friday as EUR is up 0.75% from Friday alone (while Cable, JPY, and most notably for risk AUD are all weaker against the USD). Treasuries sold off through European hours today and then recovered about half the loss only to ebb quietly into the close with 30Y +6.5bps from Friday (another divergence with stocks) and steeper curve. All-in-all, it seems confusion reigned on Europe but the bias in credit (and financials) seemed more concerned than equities (even with HD and WMT) and FX as real assets were bought aggressively.

Following the recent downgrades of many of the major European banks and insurers and last year's comments by Fitch on insurers' inability to pass on losses to policyholders, the hot-topic of ASSGEN, ALZ, and the rest of the capital-impaired forced-soakers-up-of-new-issue-demand in the European insurance market are under new pressure as The WSJ points out today that new 'rightly punitive' capital rules have been watered down. The 2014 introduction of 'Solvency II' - the insurers' equivalent to banks' Basel III capital rules - did indeed attempt to create risk-weighted capital requirements and better balance assets and liabilities within these firms. However, as Hester Plumridge notes, regulators bowed to industry pressure (again) adding the ability to shift discount rates to get around low-rate-implied valuations for their annuity streams and the introduction of a 'countercyclical premium' to avoid the growing (and negative) spread between distressed assets and rising liabilities. As Plumridge concludes, "a solvency regime that ignores all European sovereign credit risk looks increasingly unrealistic. Investors could end up none the wiser." After some systemic compression, the last week or so has seen insurers start to deteriorate as perhaps the market will enforce its own capital expectations even if regulators are unwilling to.

In spite of the fact that the Greek story has been out there for almost 2 years now, it still drives the market. Virtually all of the big moves this week came on the back of Greek headlines so it is impossible to argue that it is “priced in”. My best guess is that a resolution (which the market believes is most likely) sparks a 2%-4% rally. A default (which I think is most likely) sparks a 5%-10% decline. So at these levels I will be short as I think the most likely move is lower, and the move lower is likely to be bigger. With the market being choppy, being nimble remains a key....The market has a tendency to do well after the credit guys leave on holiday shortened trading days. So with the desire to believe that Europe will not let Greece default (in spite of evidence to the contrary) the markets may remain in rally mode for the day because no one wants to miss the imminent resolution of the crisis. I am far more convinced that we will get some very disappointing headlines because the situation really doesn’t work, and the tone of Europe has switched from “No Default” to “No Disorderly Default”.