Bear Stearns High Yield Index drops 0.06% on week to Sept. 1, now up 2.47% year to date

By Paul A. Harris

St. Louis, Sept. 2 - The Bear Stearns High Yield Index dropped 0.06% during the most recent week ended Sept. 1, ending the period with a year-to-date return of 2.47%.

The gain follows the previous week's 0.42% gain.

The index yield-to-worst spread widened by 24 basis points to 389 basis points.

The index has now reported gains in 45 of the past 64 weeks. Thus far in 2005 the index has posted 21 positive weekly returns versus 14 negative ones.

Only five of the 11 industry sectors that comprise the Bear Stearns High Yield Index saw gains for the week to Sept. 1.

The Utility sector was the outperformer, returning 0.32% on the week to advance its year-to-date return to 1.66%. Both of its components advanced on the week: Independent Power Producers gained 0.37% and Regulated gained 0.21%.

Transportation posted the biggest loss during the week to Sept. 1, declining 1.72% to send its year-to-date return down to negative 14.43%, making it the year-to-date underperformer of the index. Transportation's ailing Airline component jettisoned a full 8.0% on the week, and remains far and away the year-to-date underperformer among all of the sub-sectors in the index at negative 46.79%.

The Telecommunication sector remained the outperformer on a year-to-date basis at up 5.28%, although it gave up 0.09% on the week. Telecommunications' Cellular component also remained the year-to-date outperformer among index sub-sectors at 13.35%, having gained 0.22% on the week.

The Bear Stearns High Yield Index yield to worst ended the week five basis points wider at 7.76%.

The index ended the week with a market value of $593.48 billion, down from the previous week's $596.67 billion. The number of issues declined by seven to 1,766 issues.

© 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.