Bear Stearns High Yield Index jumps 1.47% for week, now down 0.13% year to date

New York, June 3 - The Bear Stearns High Yield Index jumped 1.47% higher during the week to June 2, putting it close to break-even for the year so far.

Since Jan. 1, the index has now lost just 0.13%.

The latest gain follows a surge of 1.73% the previous week.

The index has now reported gains in 35 of the past 51 weeks.

Thus far in 2005, the index has posted 11 positive weekly returns versus 11 negative ones.

All 11 industry sectors making up the Bear Stearns index showed positive returns for the week.

The index's yield to worst decreased by 34 basis points to 7.88% during the week to June 2, while the yield-to-worst spread tightened by 16 bps to end at 421 bps.

Transportation was the leading sector for the week, rising 1.90% on strength in its airline component, which soared 4.59% in the seven days, the best performance of any of the industry sub-sectors.

However, transportation is still down 9.77% year to date and airlines are under water by 25.51%, the worst performance among all the sectors and sub-sectors, respectively.

The smallest gain among the 11 broad sectors was recorded by basic materials, which was up 1.10% in the seven days. It is now down 1.39% so far in 2005.

Its steel component showed the weakest performance among the sub-sectors, but still managed to gain 0.34% for a year-to-date return of negative 2.71%.

For the year so far, telecommunications is the leading industry sector with a 2.41% return after adding 1.79% in the week just completed.

Cellular is the top sub-sector with an 8.01% gain since Jan. 1 after adding 2.32% in the most recent week.

The index ended the week with a market value of $536.92 billion, compared to $531.96 billion the previous week. The number of issues decreased by nine to 1,734 issues.

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