Bear Stearns High Yield Index up 0.14% in week to Nov. 3, now 0.98% higher year to date

New York, Nov. 4 - The Bear Stearns High Yield Index gained 0.14% in the most recent week, roughly reversing its 0.19% decline the week before and pushing the year-to-date return up to 0.98%.

The index has now reported gains in 49 of the past 73 weeks. Thus far in 2005, the index has posted 25 positive weekly returns versus 19 negative ones.

Seven of the 11 industry sectors making up the index showed positive returns while four declined.

Telecommunications led the way with a 0.92% rise, fattening its year-to-date performance to 5.82% and keeping it as the number one sector for 2005 so far. A 2.01% surge in the sector's CLECs and other local carriers component was largely behind the strong performance.

In the other direction, the utility sector showed the largest loss, dropping 0.48% in the week to Nov. 3 and widening its loss since Jan. 1 to 1.25%.

A 2.19% drop in the regulated component caused the weak performance in utilities. That was also the worst performance of any of the narrow sub-sectors that make up the broader 11 groups. But even after the loss, the regulated utilities are still up 0.78% so far in 2005.

Airlines were the best performing of the sub-sectors, jumping 3.18%, but they are still down 53.69% year to date, the only double-digit loser among the sub-sectors.

With that component's poor return, transportation is in last place among the 11 sectors for the year so far with a 16.46% loss.

Among the sub-sectors, telecommunications' cellular category is the strongest performer of the year at 13.63%.

For the week, the index's yield-to-worst spread tightened by 11 basis points to 369.

The yield to worst dipped one bps on the week to 8.26%.

The market value of the index fell during the week to $577.61 billion from $578.81 billion. The number of issues remained dropped two to 1,770 issues.

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