Bear Stearns High Yield Index gains 0.49% in week to March 16, now up 2.31% year to date

By Paul A. Harris

St. Louis, March 17 - The Bear Stearns High Yield Index gained nearly half a point during the week to March 16, advancing its year-to-date return to 2.31%.

The 0.49% gain follows the previous week's 0.13% loss.

The index has now reported gains in 60 of the past 92 weeks.

For the most recent week, the index's yield-to-worst spread widened by 4 basis points to 365 bps. The yield to worst widened by 13 bps to 8.47%.

All 11 of the industry sectors making up the index posted gains during the most recent week.

The media sector led the charge, pushing ahead an even three-quarters of a point, upping its year-to-date return to 1.58%.

Two of the media's subsectors had returns on the week of greater than 1.00%: TV broadcasting rose 1.32%, increasing its year-to-date return to 1.36%, while media's North American cable component moved ahead 1.04% on the week, upping its year-to-date return to 1.07%.

The highest return on the week among industry subsectors was that of the transportation sector's airlines component, which represents only 0.08% of the index composite: airlines returned 1.94% on the week to up its year-to-date return to 12.87%.

The basic materials sector's forest/paper products component, representing 3.49% of the composite, had the second-highest return for the week among subsectors at 1.47%, advancing its year-to-date return to 2.32%.

Only five subsectors turned in negative numbers during the week to March 16. Media's outdoor advertising component suffered the greatest loss at negative 0.35%, reducing its year-to-date return to 1.82%.

The transportation sector, which represents only 0.75% of the index composite, continues to enjoy the greatest year-to-date return among all industry sectors at 3.79%, having gained 0.58% on the week.

In second place, with respect to year-to-date returns among industry sectors, is the consumer cyclical sector, which makes up 28.78% of the index composite and has returned 3.27% on the year to March 16.

Apart from the transportation sector's above-mentioned airlines component, the telecommunications sector's long distance component, representing 0.53% of the composite, has the strongest year-to-date return at 5.77%, having gained 0.53% on the week.

The market value of the index ended the week at $571.89 billion, up from the previous week's $569.73 billion. The number of issues increased by one to 1,682.

© 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.