For those looking for income, the last five years have been a struggle to say the least. Low interest rates have caused many investors to look beyond traditional income sources. One of the chief parking places for their cash have been high-yield or junk bonds. That’s all well and good … until the music stops. And it looks like the music may be stopping. As investors have fled the markets and the fears of a correction have taken hold, junk has been one of the hardest hit. Here’s Tracy Alloway and Vivianne Rodrigues at the Financial Times with more on junk’s downfall.
Private Equity Beat/WSJ (Rob Copeland): The hedge funds & private equity players are starting to short junk debt — even the ones who syndicate and issue this stuff.
The Reformed Broker (Josh Brown): So what happens when everyone runs to the exits in junk bond land?
USA Today (John Waggoner): The huge iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG) wasn’t the only junk bond fund to get hit hard lately. These funds suffered even more.
ETF Trends (Tom Lydon): But not the ProShares Short High Yield ETF (SJB). This junk bond ETF is soaring.
Barron’s Income Investing Blog (Michael Aneiro): So when will the junk bond correction be over?
SL Advisor Blog (Simon Lack): Shenanigans in untraded REIT land.
Bloomberg View (Leonid Bershidsky): Banks need to take on more risk.
The Wall Street Journal’s Digits (Brian R. Fitzgerald): Microsoft (MSFT) scores a touchdown. The NFL is going to use Surface Tablets this year.
Quartz (Svati Kirsten Narula): Coca-Cola (KO) says it’s sorry with a formula change. Apparently, it didn’t remember the New Coke outrage of the 1980s.