Bear Stearns High Yield Index returns 1.28% to Jan. 25; yield-to-worst spread hits new all-time tight

By Paul Deckelman

New York, Jan. 26 - The Bear Stearns High Yield Index continued to gain in the most recent week, posting a 1.28% return for both January and the new year so far, up from 0.79% in the previous week, ended Jan. 18.

At the Jan. 25 close, the index's yield to worst was 7.72% - 6 basis points tighter than the previous week's.

Meanwhile its yield-to-worst spread also continued to come in, to 283 bps - substantially tighter than the previous week's 299 bps, and tighter also than the old all-time tight level of 298 bps.

On the year thus far, all 12 of the industry sectors that comprise the Bear

Stearns index are posting positive returns, with the basic materials sector remaining in the lead with a return of 1.83% for both the month and the year to date, up from 1.16% the previous week.

The outperformer among all of the subsectors in the index is the health care sector's services-diagnostic component, which has returned 5.63% so far this month and in 2007, up from its index-leading 4.65% return the week before. The subsector thus continues to rebound from its dramatic losses in 2006, when it was the only subsector in the entire index to see a negative return for the year, finishing down 10.36%.

Among the underperformers, the energy sector remains the weakest, with a 0.26% return for the month and year-to-date, although it has now swung into the black, joining all of the other sectors, undoing a 0.17% cumulative loss seen the week before.

The consumer cyclical sector's lodging component, with a 0.16% cumulative loss, is the worst underperformer of any subsector, dislodging energy's exploration and production subsector, which had that unwanted distinction the week before, at negative 0.71% for the month and the year. That energy E&P subsector, with a 0.10% loss in the latest week, joined lodging as the only two subsectors in the index to be in the red this past week.

Up to Jan. 25, the index posted a market value of $613.65 billion, up $2.3 billion from the previous week. The issue count was 1,629, up 16 from the previous week.

© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.