Bear Stearns index down 3.75% in most recent period, airlines worst

By Peter Heap

New York, Sept. 21 - The Bear Stearns high yield index lost 3.75% on a total return basis in the most recent period, which was shifted to capture the market's performance from the close on Monday Sept. 10 to Thursday Sept. 20. The index normally covers one-week periods but because of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and subsequent market disruption, Bear Stearns compiled the figures for a different stretch of time.

The 3.75% loss cuts the year-to-date total return to 1.85%. The yield to worst on the index is now 13.81% for a spread to worst of 967 basis points. The index currently covers 1,430 high-yield issues with a total market value of $297.0 billion at the end of the measurement period.

All the 11 broad sectors tracked by Bear Stearns lost ground during the 10 days. Worst performing was transportation, which gave up 15.07%, largely as a result of the airlines sub-sector which lost 25.38%, the biggest drop of any of the narrow industry sectors tracked in the index.

The strongest sector on the week was energy which declined 0.67%. By narrow industry sub-sector, paging and messaging was top, recording a positive return of 1.30%, the only sub-sector to do so.

Year to date, transportation is now down 7.99% while airlines have lost 16.14%. However telecom continues in bottom place with a negative 28.34% total return. Despite its strength in the most recent period, the weakest narrow sub-sector is paging and messaging with a loss of 82.01% so far this year, according to the Bear Stearns index.

The best performing broad sector is consumer non-cyclicals, up 23.09% so far in 2001. Leading among individual industries is convenience and drug retailers, one of the components of consumer non-cyclicals, which is 80.62% ahead on the year.

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