Bear Stearns High Yield Index bounces back, up 1.23% after four losing weeks

New York, Oct. 18 - The Bear Stearns High Yield Index ended four straight weeks of declines and gained 1.23% in the most recent week.

The rise cut the index's year-to-date loss to 9.67% and follows declines of 2.70%, 1.28%, 1.41% and 0.56% in the previous four weeks.

Thanks to the gain, the index's market value rose back above $300 billion - although it also included an additional three issues compared to the previous week.

By industry sector, all but one of the 11 groups into which Bear Stearns divides the index rose in the week to Oct. 17.

The top performer was technology, which rose 4.03% in the week. That reduced its loss so far this year to 16.32%.

Also notably strong were telecommunications, up 3.59%, and utilities, up 2.97%.

The sole sector to decline was transportation, which fell 2.89% and is now down 28.14% since Jan. 1.

On a year-to-date basis, the strongest sector continues to be consumer cyclicals, which added 0.62% in the most recent week and are now up 5.23%.

Despite its strong performance in the week just completed, telecommunications remains the worst performer so far in 2002 with a 47.79% decline.

Looking at the narrow sub-sectors, the biggest rise in the week to Oct. 17 was seen in the towers component of telecommunications, which added 6.27% (Technology is not subdivided by Bear Stearns). However towers remain down 29.82% so far this year.

The worst performer was airlines, which fell 4.54% and is now down 40.76% since Jan. 1.

Year-to-date the top performing sub-sector remains diversified programmers, up 36.21% after adding 0.29% in the week just completed.

In the other direction, long distance remains the last-placed sub-sector, down 73.84% although it rose 0.11% in the week to Oct. 17.

For the week, the index's yield to worst shrank 19 basis points to 14.55% from 14.74% seven days earlier. The yield-to-worst spread narrowed 66 basis points to 1,118 basis points compared to 1,184 basis points the week before.

The index's overall market value rose to $302.575 billion in 1,446 issues, both up from $298.295 billion in 1,443 issues a week earlier.

© 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.