Tag Archives: credit markets

Corporate Bond Market-Balancing on a Knife Edge

MarketsMuse Fixed Income Update “Corporate Bond Market- Balancing on a Knife Edge” is courtesy of extract from the 10.02.15 weekend edition of “Quigley’s Corner”, a daily synopsis of the investment grade corporate bond market and rates trading space authored by Ron Quigley, Managing Director of investment bank and institutional brokerage Mischler Financial Group, the financial industry’s oldest and largest minority brokerdealer owned and operated by service-disabled military veterans. Mischler Financial was selected in 2014 and again in 2015 for the Wall Street Letter Award “Best Research-Brokerdealer”

Ron Quigley, Mgn.Dir. Mischler Financial Group
Ron Quigley, Mgn.Dir. Mischler Financial Group

Blackouts couldn’t be more optimally timed as we experience massive re-pricing in our IG primary credit market.  The corporate black-outs are serving as an unplanned, well-timed inherently built-in “kick-the-can” that is necessary in helping us to all buy time as we navigate thru what is perhaps the most unpredictable, treacherous, volatile and uncertain time that our primary markets have experienced since 2008.  As one very senior syndicate source told me “the credit markets are sitting on a knife’s edge.” IG spreads are on the whole 44 bps wider at the end of the third quarter according to Morgan Stanley.

Today’s notoriously and unexpected poor employment data was the last thing credit markets needed and it has instigated a massive Treasury rally. Perhaps this is a bit of good news because when both are combined, is a potential high velocity tailwind to credit products from big government bond funds.  However, that’s “if” funds want to own credit product and hold it for an extended period of time and potentially wear a negative mark-to-market.

Having said that, the guy-in-the-corner suggests that at some point this weekend, you should put on your favorite song and sing along to it after many shots of tequila.  When you get to the point of feeling bad, look at yourself in a mirror and realize that you can begin to feel better with coffee, food, sleep and time but come Monday morning the business model you are used to is about to change.  Not adapt; not get better; rather change. The trends in the credit markets that we have seen over the last two quarters are showing no signs of abating, and in some degrees, worsening.

Now please let me introduce the moment you’ve been waiting for..

Syndicate Forecasts and Sound Bites from “The Best and the Brightest!”   

I am happy to report that once again the “QC” received unanimous participation from all 23 syndicate desks surveyed in today’s Best & Brightest polling.  That includes all of the top 22 ranked syndicate desks according to Bloomberg’s U.S. IG U.S. Investment Grade Corporate Bond underwriting league table that can be found on your terminals at “LEAG” + [GO] after which you select #201 (US Investment Grade Corporates).  Their cumulative underwriting percentage is 94.00% of YTD IG dollar debt underwriting which simply means they’re the ones with visibility.  But it’s not only about their volume forecasts, rather it’s also about their comments!  This core syndicate group does it best; they know best; so they’re the ones you WANT and NEED to hear from. 

*Please note that these are Investment Grade Corporates only. They do not include SSA issuance unless otherwise noted.

The question posed to the “Best and the Brightest” early this morning was:

“Good morning! So, this week the massive repricing in primary markets saw average NICs bust out to 54.23 bps; bid-to-covers shrank to an average 2.02x; today’s numbers were BAD; Obamanomics is quite the engine of growth and job creation, China’s slowdown is showing up in our data (ISM Milwaukee posted its worst manufacturing number since the dot com bubble). Spreads are wider on today’s data to start. Lower-for-longer might just be lower forever!  The two-part question for today is what are your volume forecasts for IG Corporate supply for BOTH next week AND October?  It’s going to be challenging to nail that down but it’s an important survey at this critical juncture.  Many thanks, Ron” 

……and here are their formidable responses: Continue reading

Market Mayhem: A Rare View From Global Macro Guru

One needs to have ‘been there and seen that’ for at least twenty years in order to have been “loaded for bear” in advance of this morning’s equities market rout. At least one of the folks who MarketsMuse has profiled during the past many months meets that profile; and those who have a true global macro perspective such as Rareview Macro’s Neil Azous have pointed to the credit spread widening during the past number of months as a prime harbinger of things to come. And so they have…

Neil Azous, Rareview Macro
Neil Azous, Rareview Macro

Last night, Neil Azous published one of his finer commentaries in advance of this morning’s global equities market rout and incorporated a great phrase:

“Man looks in the abyss, there’s nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.” – Lou Mannheim, Wall Street, 1987

 

The highlights of last night’s edition of “Sight Beyond Sight” are below…

  • Big Picture View
  • S&P 500 View
  • Asset allocation Requires Swimming Against the Tide – Low-to-Negative Downside Capture
  • Long German versus Short US Equities (Currency Hedge)
  • US Fixed Income – Short 2016 Eurodollars
  • Long European & Japanese Equities (FX hedged), US Biotech and US 10-Yr Treasuries
  • Long US Energy Sector
  • Volatility – Sell Apple Inc.; Not the S&P 500 or VIX
  • Harvesting S&P 500 Index Option Skew
  • Long Agricultural Call Options
  • Long US Housing (Hedged)
  • Technical Mean Reversion – Short EUR/BRL
  • Long Euro Stoxx 50 Index Dividend Futures (symbol: DEDA Index)

To read the full edition of the Sight Beyond Sight special Sunday (Aug 23 2015) commentary, please click here*

*Subscription is required; a free, 10-day trial is available

Neil Azous is the founder and managing member of Rareview Macro, an advisory firm to some of the world’s most influential investors and the publisher of the daily newsletter Sight Beyond Sight.

Convergence of Credit Markets and GeoPolitics-Its All Greek This Week

MarketsMuse.com Fixed Income Fix update is courtesy of extract from 06 April commentary from Mischler Financial Group’s “Quigley’s Corner”, Wall Street Letter’s 2015 winner of “Best Research-BrokerDealer.”

How Low Will Greece Go?

Ron Quigley Mischler Financial
Ron Quigley
Mischler Financial

When one broaches the subject of German war reparations, it opens up perhaps modern civilization’s most sensitive human drama to one-sided debate.  But when the cries come from the Hellenic Republic, it also points to an audacity on the part of Greece to hold back nothing for money.  Is it a callous, cowardly blackmail of Germany or is it an appropriate claw-back provision?  You be the judge, I am merely putting it out there.  Last March, Alex Tsipras accused Germany of reneging on World War II compensation owed his nation by Germany which occupied his country from the year 1941 thru 1944.  Angela Merkel’s office reiterated several times that Germany had made good on those payments – end of story!  Clearly a case to stir up emotions against Germany and to garner support from laggard nations like France and Italy to secure additional financial recompense and negotiation leverage for the nearly bankrupt Greece.  Continue reading