Investment Grade

There has been a "continued shunning of fixed income" with over $25 Bn of outflows from bond funds in three weeks, of which $6.4 Bn took place in the past week, resulting in outflows in 6 of past 7 weeks.However, the biggest outflow risk is not to Junk but to investment grade, that main funding source for trillions in corporate stock buybacks: it was the IG space that took another beating with largest outflows ($3.5bn) in 17 weeks!

And so Wall Street has set its sights on the next junk bond fund casualty, a name which is well-known to most equity market participants: none other than Waddell and Reed (WDR), the fund which rose to infamy in the aftermath of the May 2010 Flash Crash, after it was initially blamed by the SEC as the culprit behind the Dow's 1000 point crash...

The Fed is now - for the first time in adult memory for half the world’s traders and money managers - tightening rather than loosening monetary conditions. A quick look at financial history is all it takes to lead anyone with leveraged money at risk to lighten up. Equally important - and vastly more strange when you think about it - this tightening comes at a time when major parts of the global economy are either grinding to a halt or imploding.

The Senate and House passed the spending bill this week, which the President signed into law on the same day. Embedded in the law is a provision to lift the 40-year old crude export ban. The lifting of the crude export ban is a historic milestone, but seemingly less relevant for US E&Ps, Midstream and Oilfield Services as compared to a year and a half ago when WTI-Brent spreads were close to $9.00/bbl vs. the current spread of $0.80/bbl. Nevertheless, there is still a negative long-term impact on refiners should spreads re-widen.

Weak earnings performance in marketing operations below the current EBIT guidance of $2.4-$2.7 billion could place negative pressure on the Baa3 ratings in the absence of any mitigating measures. A weakening of the company's liquidity position, delays with the planned divestments in 2016 or a material reduction in its working capital funding capacities by the banks, as well as sustained high leverage with adjusted debt/EBITDA exceeding 4x, will also put negative pressure on the Baa3 ratings."

As new investor liquidity evaporates and as billions are redeemed first from the junk bond universe, then investment grade and then loans, the debt crisis which was unleashed in anticipation of the Fed's rate hike, is about to get much worse, and lead to even more prominent hedge fund "gates" and liquidations.

"The irony in this year’s batch of outrageous predictions is that some of them are “outrageous” merely because they run counter to overwhelming market consensus. In fact, many would not look particularly outrageous at all in more “normal” times – if there even is such a thing!"

The sell-off in credit over the past week has led many investors to ask what it means for equities. Credit spread widening usually has negative implications for equity but as Goldman notes,  it is critical to estimate the degree to which the equity market has already priced the weakness to determine the potential risks to equity going forward. Interestingly, Goldman finds the weakness in high yield credit was foreshadowed by weakness in the equities of high yield companies (like for like), but the weakness in Investment Grade credit spreads relative to their corresponding equities represents a new divergence suggesting meaningful downside for S&P 500 investors.

Soaring junk bond redemptions; rising investment grade (and high yield) yields pressuring corporate buybacks; record corporate leverage and sliding cash flows; Chinese devaluation back with a vengeance; capital outflows from EM accelerating as dollar strength returns; corporate profits and revenues in recession; CEOs most pessimistic since 2012, oh and the Fed's first rate hike in 9 years expected to soak up as much as $800 billion in excess liquidity. To Wall Street's strategists none of this matters: as Bloomberg observes, virtually every single sellside forecasts expects "no end to the bull market."

"Yeah but it's junk credit... who cares! I am invested in solid megacaps and even solider FANGs - what can go wrong?" Well, this...

Jim Cramer - of all people - warned about this in 2007: watch the video inside!

First it was just junk, then investment grade bonds started getting whacked, then liquidity in the 10Y Treasury imploded, and now CLOs are getting hit: “The price declines are alarming and worrying," according to Rishad Ahluwalia, JPMorgan’s head of global CLO research.

While high-yield bond ETFs have been under massive pressure, some have argued that this carnage has yet to really hit the underlying cash bond market (since the flows are more exchanges between two parties as opposed to redeeming ETFs for actual bonds). It would appear that pattern is changing as today the bloodbath in ETFs is spilling directly into the corporate bond markets themselves with every sector in investment grade and high yield deep in the red.

It's official: two of America oldest publicly traded companies will merge, with Dow and DuPoint merging as equals in a combined company that will have a $130 billion market cap and will be named DowDuPont. And while shareholders already benefited from the deal with shares of both consitutents rising by 10% in the days preceding the official announcement, the biggest loser are once again the employees: the combined company announced that as part of the $700 million in restructuring efforts, 10% of the combined company's employees will be laid off.