Bear Stearns high yield index down 1.01% in most recent week, up 1.61% year to date

New York, June 14 - The Bear Stearns High Yield Index fell 1.01% in the most recent week, cutting a big piece out of its year-to-date return which is now 1.61%.

The drop follows a 0.29% decline the week before, two small moves, one up and one down, before that and three weeks of declines before that.

Of the index's 11 industry sectors, 10 declined and only one rose.

The biggest loss was in media, which fell 3.53% as its biggest component, North American cable, dropped 7.96%, making it the week's worst performing industry sub-sector. Year-to-date media is now down 5.87% while North American cable is 18.23% lower.

Also weak was the utility sector, which gave up 2.82% and is now down 8.24% year to date. Utilities had been the worst performer the previous week.

On a year-to-date basis, telecommunications continues at the bottom among the 11 sectors. Its loss of 1.60% in the most recent week gives it a year-to-date return of negative 21.25%.

The worst narrow sub-sector was again broadband access and internet services; despite turning in the best performance of any sub-sector in the most recent week with a 1.92% rise, it has declined 37.60% so far this year.

Moving in the other direction, the only one of the broad sectors to rise was capital goods-manufacturing which eked out a 0.09% rise. Its year-to-date performance is 10.04%.

On a year-to-date basis, the best performer is transportation, which is ahead 10.24% even after a 0.04% decline in the week just completed.

Among the narrow classifications, the top performer year to date is diversified programmers which rose 0.13% in the most recent week for a 29.16% return so far this year.

In the week to June 13, the index's yield to worst rose 26 basis points, climbing to 12.30% from 12.04% the week before. The yield to worst spread widened 35 basis points to 811 basis points from 776 basis points.

Overall the index included 1,417 issues with a market value of $334.811 billion, the same number of issues but a decline in value from $337.531 billion the week before.

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