Bear Stearns High Yield Index finishes week to Aug. 3 showing 4.40% year-to-date return

By Paul A. Harris

St. Louis, Aug. 4 - The Bear Stearns High Yield Index has returned 4.40% for the year to Thursday.

The yield to worst was 8.64%. The yield-to-worst spread was 371 basis points, 6 bps tighter than the spread reported one week previous.

For the first three days in August, the index has returned 0.27%.

Among the 12 industry sectors, the greatest return over those three sessions was that of health care, up 0.52%. The move trims that sector's year-to-date losses to negative 2.29%. Nevertheless, health care remains by far the underperformer among Bear Stearns index industry sectors for 2006 through Thursday.

The health care sector's services-diagnostic component provided the most meaningful infusion on the young month to Aug. 3, returning 1.60% during that brief period, rendering it the month-to-date outperformer among subsectors and reducing its year-to-date losses to negative 2.18%.

All told, 10 of the 12 Bear Stearns index industry sectors showed positive returns for the month through Thursday.

The most significant loss during that period was sustained by the transportation sector, which fell 0.13%, cutting its year-to-date return to 7.54%. That year-to-date return, however, is second only to the consumer cyclical sector's 7.77% for 2006 to Thursday.

For the first three days of August the consumer cyclical sector (which represents 28.72% of the Bear Stearns index composite, versus transportation's meager 0.65%) returned 0.48%.

The year-to-date leader among the Bear Stearns index subsectors is transportation's airlines component at 22.45%. Airlines, which advanced 0.05% during the first three days of August, represents a mere 0.09% of the composite.

The second best year-to-date performance among the subsectors is that of the telecommunications sector's long distance component, at 15.83%. Long distance, which represents 0.60% of the composite, fell 0.05% in the month to Thursday, however.

Year to date, third place among the subsectors is held down by the consumer cyclical sector's automobile manufacturing related component, now up 13.19% on the year. That subsector, which represents an elephantine 14.51% of the composite, has advanced 0.84% thus far in the young month.

To Aug. 3, the index had a market value of $564.20 billion, and the issue count stood at 1,648 issues.

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