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ETF News

Vanguard To Launch Its First Ever Muni Bond ETF

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MarketMuse update profiles the largest mutual funds provider, Vanguard push to become the top ETF provider. Currently,  Vanguard is the second-largest provider of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the world, with about $451 billion in ETF assets under management, as of March 2015. Now Vanguard seeks to become the top ETF provider with its first ever muni bond, the Vanguard Tax Exempt Bond ETF. The MarketMuse update is courtesy of an article from Investopedia’s 20 March article “Vanguard to Launch Muni Bond ETF”. Extracts from the article are below:  

Vanguard, well known for its stable of index mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), is rolling out its first muni bond index fund, the Vanguard Tax Exempt Bond ETF. The fund, which will have a mutual fund share class as well, doesn’t have a ticker symbol yet. This is Vanguard’s first muni bond index fund.

Muni bonds typically appeal to investors in a higher income tax bracket and are held in taxable investment accounts. The ETF will track the S&P National AMT Free Municipal Bond Index. The index currently yields 1.7% which equates to a 2.5% yield for those in the 33% income tax bracket.

The new fund is in line with Vanguard’s big push in the ETF space. Vanguard is currently the third largest issuer of ETFs and has been aggressively cutting expenses in an effort to build its asset base. It recently lowered expenses on 12 of its equity ETFs including 10 sector ETFs. Vanguard currently has 13 fixed-income ETFs including the giant Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF (BND) with more than $24 billion in assets.

The Vanguard Tax Exempt Bond ETF (and associated mutual fund share classes) will likely be a viable competitor in the muni bond space right out of the box. The low expense ratio of 0.12% is less than half that of the largest index ETF competitor. Add to this Vanguard’s solid reputation as an index fund provider and its distribution muscle and the new fund will be well positioned to gain market share in this asset class.

To read the entire article from Investopedia, click here.

Fixed Income, People Profiles

5 Reasons To Be High on High Yield Bonds

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While high-yield bond followers are seemingly caught between a rock and a hard place as interest rates may be poised to pick up, some expert investors are positing that high yield positioning is precisely the tactical approach to maintain.. The following MarketsMuse.com fixed income fix is courtesy of contributed article “5 Reasons to Hold High Yield” from Philadelphia-based RIA Clark Capital Management Group’s Chief Investment Officer, Sean Clark, CFA.

Editor Note: Before any MarketsMuse followers pooh-pooh the notion that spreads are bound to widen (and in turn, disrupting HY bond exposure), Clark Capital has been successfully navigating fixed income markets since 1986 and currently has $3billion AUM. The firm recently launched Navigator® Tactical Fixed Income Fund.

Sean Clark, CFA; Clark Capital
Sean Clark, CFA; Clark Capital

“The high yield market was bloodied in the second half of last year, primarily due to the collapse in energy prices.While yields and spreads backedup,broader-based credit remained firm, suggesting that it was an isolated problem due to the collapse of the energy market.We believe that the high yield market will reward investors who adopt a tactical approach.Below are five reasons we anticipate a reemergence of opportunities in the high yield space in 2015: Continue reading →

ETF News, Global Macro Strategy

ETFs To Hedge Against Strong Dollar-Currency Swinging

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MarketsMuse.com profile of ETFs intended to provide global-macro-focused investors with a hedge against a continuing strong dollar and currency swings is courtesy of below extract from Mar 20 WSJ column by reporter Carolyn Cui.

Exchange-traded funds that protect against currency swings are attracting U.S. investors concerned that the strong dollar will erode their gains.

Currency-hedged ETFs have more than doubled their assets this year to $50.3 billion, largely thanks to strong inflows of $21.6 billion, according to data tracker ETF.com. Firms that offer the funds—including WisdomTree Investments and Deutsche Bank—use derivatives to offset the effects of currency swings, which they say could cause unintended volatility for investors and even hurt their returns in periods of dollar strength. Continue reading →

ETF News

And, The Winner Is…According to ETF.com…

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MarketsMuse.com ETF coverage profiles ETF.com Awards Ceremony courtesy of opening extract from ETF.com news release. Category winners for “best” and respective ‘runners up’ extend across best issuers, best strategists, best capital markets desk, and best products across equity, fixed income, and currency and include the following products: HEDJ, DXJ, CHNB, ZROZ, BNDX, VTI, EMQQ, FV, IUSB, PDBC, TYTE, WYDE, BCHP, COMT, DIVY, SXOE, DGRO, DVP, FMLP, AIRR, QVAL, ASHS.

The WisdomTree Europe Hedged Equity Fund (HEDJ) was named the ETF of the Year at the second annual ETF.com Awards held tonight in New York—in no small part because it has been more popular than competing equity strategies designed to protect U.S. investors from the strength of the dollar.

ETF.com, the 15-year-old news, views and financial data company focused exclusively on exchange-traded funds, also honored important individuals like Lee Kranefuss, who built iShares, the world’s largest ETF company; and the fund sponsor First Trust.

The annual awards ceremony, which took place at Chelsea Piers, recognizes the people, products and companies that have been instrumental in moving the 22-year-old ETF industry forward and that have helped create better options and outcomes for investors.

Continue reading →

ETF News, Global Macro Strategy

Risk Off or Risk On for Sweden ETF $EWD As Riksbank Takes Rates Deeper Into Negative Territory

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MarketsMuse.com update profiling iShares MSCI Sweden ETF ($EWD) and a global macro view is courtesy of extract from March 18th coverage by ETFtrends.com’s Todd Shriber

Shares of the iShares MSCI Sweden ETF (NYSEArca: EWD) were modestly higher Wednesday after the Riksbank, the world’s oldest central bank, surprisingly took Sweden’s repo rate deeper into negative territory with a cut of 15 basis points to -0.25% from -0.1%

ETFTrends-logoSome of Sweden’s larger companies are struggling due to weak demand from Europe, the country’s largest export market, as the krona currency appreciated against the euro. However, lower central bank rates has helped stimulate household spending.

The Swedish central bank recently cut its benchmark rate below zero for the first time and started buying bonds to combat deflationary pressures. However, if the krona continues to strengthen, the Riksbank could be forced to implement more aggressive measures. [Loose Monetary Policy Could Lift Sweden ETF]

In its efforts to stimulate inflation, Riksbank may not be done employing accommodative monetary policy.

“For us, we will pay close attention to the door they opened to launching a scheme to channel monetary support directly to corporations via lending. While no details were provided for the second meeting, we have for some time believed that a funding-for-lending program (FLS), a measure already used by the Bank of England, or a public-private investment program (PPIP), a liquidity tool used by the US Federal Reserve, are transmission mechanisms that have much greater and immediate impacts on the real economy than quantitative easing,” said Rareview Macro founder Neil Azous in a note out Wednesday. Continue reading →

ETF News, Fixed Income

BlackRock New Bond ETF To Trade Like Common Stock

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BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager with over $4.59 trillion in assets under management. iShares is a section of BlackRock that is in control of hundreds of ETFs. As noted on iShares page and continued to ring true today, Many people are turning to ETFs for diversified, low-cost and tax efficient investing. ETFs can be a powerful addition to your investment portfolio.

MarketMuse blog update is courtesy of the New York Times’ Landon Thomas Jr. with an extract from Thomas’s article, “BlackRock’s New Breed of Exchange-Traded Bond Fund Prizes Stability Over Swagger“

While he may not live the life of a swaggering bond market pro, Mr. Radell, a bond manager at the fund giant BlackRock, is challenging a strategy that has rewarded some of his flashier peers: the pursuit of high-risk, high-return investments.

The weapon that Mr. Radell will be using is a new variety of exchange-traded fund, or E.T.F., which tracks an index of stocks or bonds but trades like a common stock, allowing investors to jump in and out.

For years now, these funds have been a hit with passive investors. Now, BlackRock is introducing a new breed of bond E.T.F. that aims to blend the best of active investing (security selection) with index investing (cost and consistency).

Scott Radell has been with BlackRock since 2003 and currently is in charge of more than 80 ETFs for BlackRock’s iShares. 

To read the entire article on the new bond ETF from BlackRock found in the New York Times, click here.

Fixed Income, Global Macro Strategy, People Profiles

A Dearth of Investment Grade Debt: Why Rates Stay Lower for Longer

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While a certain sect of economists are lamenting the exponential increase in debt issued by an assortment of sovereign entities [and corporate bond issuers] within the context of a feared liquidity crisis if and when rates turn higher and institutional investors might run for the exits at the same time, MarketsMuse.com fixed income fix profiles global macro observations from Barry Ritholtz, the Bloomberg View columnist who writes about finance, the economy and the business world. Barry started the Big Picture blog in 2003 and is the founder of Ritholtz Wealth Management, an asset management and financial planning firm. Below is excerpt from Barry’s Mar 17 Bloomberg View article”The Worldwide Deficit of High-Quality Debt”

Continue reading →

ETF News

Investors Seek ETF To Protect Against The Great Wall Of China’s Crumble

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MarketMuse blog update is courtesy of Business Times’ article “China slowdown concern spurs record option hedges on ETF” . The update profiles the largest US exchange-traded fund tracking China’s mainland market reaching its highest since the ETF was created. An excerpt from Business Times is below. 

Investors are rushing to buy protection against declines in Chinese stocks amid concern an economic slowdown will undermine their world-beating rally.

Demand to hedge against future losses on the largest US exchange-traded fund tracking China’s mainland market climbed to the highest since the ETF was created in November 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The buying pushed the ratio of bearish to bullish contracts to a five-month high on March 11 as investors pulled $34 million from the fund in a second week of outflows.

The bets underscore growing investor skepticism that the Shanghai Composite Index can sustain its advance after rising 39 per cent since October against a backdrop of monetary easing and weaker-than-estimated economic data. The central bank has cut interest rates twice in four months to revive an economy expanding at its slowest pace in 24 years, helping fuel gains in the so-called A-share market.

“There’ll be some pull-back,” Chang Liu, a London-based China economist at Capital Economics Ltd, said by phone on March 12. His firm predicts a decline of about 11 per cent from last week’s close on the Shanghai gauge by the end of 2015.

“GDP growth will be slower, the property market remains weak and overcapacity is still an issue.”

Purchases of so-called puts, or options to sell the US$1 billion Deutsche Bank’s X-trackers Harvest CSI 300 China A- Shares ETF, has jumped fourfold to an all-time high of 44,760 contracts last week from a January low. The open interest on options to buy the ETF, or calls, increased 45 per cent during the period to 52,924, also a record.

For the entire article from the Business Times, click here.

ETF News, Fixed Income, Global Macro Strategy

A Euro-Surprise Is On The Way..A Rareview Global Macro View

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Marketsmuse.com blog update courtesy of extract from a.m. edition of Rareview Macro LLC’s “Sight Beyond Sight”, the global macro trading investment newsletter favored by the industry’s leading hedge funds, investment managers and the world’s most savvy self-directed investors.

Neil Azous, Rareview Macro
Neil Azous, Rareview Macro
  • -FOMC Meeting: Best Wishes
    -Swiss National Bank (SNB) Meeting
    -Singapore: The First Derivative of China and Crude Oil

Firstly, FINalternatives was kind enough to publish our thoughts on what we believe are the main forces driving the economic cycle in Europe right now, the supply/demand conundrum in European bond markets, and why Bund yields could rise even while the Euro exchange rate falls. This is not a trading piece or a recap of recent events but an analysis to show how a mix of history and the implementation of monetary policy will combine to generate accelerating growth in Europe. It is basically the culmination of the views that we have been outlining to you since mid-January. If you’d like to read it, you can find it here: A Euro-Surprise Is On The Way And It Is Not What You Think It Is. Continue reading →

ETF News, Tech Talk

Mr Robot: Tom Dorsey’s ETF Uses Computers To Outperform Humans

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MarketMuse update is courtesy of BloombergBusiness’s Anthony Effinger and Eric Balchunas’s 15 March article, “Funds Run by Robots Now Account for $400 Billion” profiles self proclaimed money manager, Tom Dorsey’s key to  a successful portfolio just takes pressing a button. 

Few people have profited more from the so-called smart-beta craze than Tom Dorsey. A new exchange-traded fund that he runs using a century-old charting methods took in $1.2 billion last year. Then, in January, he sold his 22-person investment firm, Dorsey, Wright & Associates, to Nasdaq OMX Group for $225 million.

Dorsey calls himself a money manager, Bloomberg Markets will report in its April issue, but his methods are more robot designer. He says so himself, proudly. If Dorsey and his team got abducted from their Richmond, Virginia, office by aliens, their algorithms could keep picking investments for the firm’s new money magnet, the First Trust Dorsey Wright Focus 5 ETF, forever.

“Once a quarter, we press a button,’’ Dorsey says. The Focus 5 algorithm then generates a list of investments, and First Trust Portfolios, his partner company, executes them. Otherwise, they don’t meddle with the robot. “We just need someone to press the button.’’

That, for Dorsey, is the essence of smart beta, or strategic beta, or scientific beta, or factor-based investing, or fundamental indexing, depending on which Ph.D. is talking. (Many smart-beta funds are designed by finance geeks.) It’s index investing with key twists, all of them rules-based, with no active management required. Most smart-beta funds track custom indexes. Some are simple variants of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and do what they say on the box. Others are hand-crafted and small batch, made by people with little more than a stock-filtering system and a dream.

For the entire article from BloombergBusiness, click here.

ETF News

Investors Reach For Euro ETFs as the US Dollar Recovers

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MarketMuse update courtesy of MarketWatch’s 12 March article, “Dollar surge has investors scrambling for a piece of this European ETF”. From the National Swiss Bank’s huge announcement in January to Greece’s continued demise, the European market has seen better days. While the US market continues to recover, the US dollar has almost completely recovered to the being equivalent with the Euro which is making investor grab at Euro ETFs. 

Back in 2008, $1.60 bought one euro EURUSD, -1.10% Fast forward to today, and the U.S. dollar is surging toward parity with the hobbled currency. Just a few more ticks to go.

Of course, the huge currency shake-up is bad news for U.S. exporters but it’s great for investors in the WisdomTree Europe Hedged Equity fund HEDJ, +0.19% And they are throwing gobs of money at it. Read: 4 stock plays that are attracting investor dollars this year.

In the past year alone, $12 billion has flowed into the fund, a more than tenfold increase. The ETF is now the biggest covering Europe with almost $14 billion in assets, according to ETF Database. That’s enough to displace the Vanguard FTSE Europe giant VGK, -0.85% as the region’s top dog.

Olly Ludwig, managing editor for ETF.com, points out that the dollar’s rise has turned a neutral investment into a world beater.

“There’s an elegant mirror-like quality to the chart that isolates the currency factor rather cleanly,” Ludwig said. “Were it not for the currency hedge, HEDJ would be about flat.”

Investors have obviously been taking notice, and currency-hedged ETFs, in general, have seen spikes in asset growth. Ludwig pointed out that, on Monday alone, HEDJ and the WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity fund DXJ, -0.39% combined to attract $1 billion. In a single day.

For the entire article from MarketWatch, click here.

ETF News

Following Slashing ETF Prices, State Street To Shutdown Three ETFs

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MarketMuse update profiles the the second oldest financial institution in the United States, State Street’s plans to shut down three ETFs after what has been a very difficult year for them. The shutdowns are due to what they call “limited market demand”. With more of an update, an excerpt from InvestmentNews’ Trevor Hunnicutt’s story, “State Street to close three ETFs that attracted little investor interest” from 10 March , is below. 

The announced closure of the ETFs, including one municipal-bond fund in partnership with Nuveen Investments Inc., comes five weeks after the ETF pioneer slashed prices on nearly a third of its funds and while the firm faces outflows in its flagship fund.

State Street, who manages the first-to-market “SPDR” ETFs, will shut its S&P Mortgage Finance ETF (KME), S&P Small Cap Emerging Asia Pacific ETF (GMFS) and SPDR Nuveen S&P VRDO Municipal Bond ETF (VRD), according to a statement Monday. The funds are each at least three years old, but none hold more than $6 million in assets.

State Street, whose money managing arm is also known as SSGA, has $441 billion in U.S. ETF assets, third behind BlackRock Inc.’s iShares and the Vanguard Group Inc. The firm is perhaps best known for its SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which is commonly recognized as the first ETF traded in the U.S. as well as the most widely traded. That fund has lost $26 billion to investor redemptions this year, according to Morningstar Inc. estimates. State Street, whose index-tracking fund is used widely by tactical traders and institutions along with advisers, has said those flows are cyclical.

Meanwhile, the firm also has tried to expand its lineup to more profitable mutual funds and partnerships on ETFs with Nuveen and DoubleLine Capital’s Jeffrey Gundlach to attract assets into other product lines.

For the entire article from InvestmentNews, click here.

ETF News, Global Macro Strategy

China ETF: One From Column A, One From Column B :$AFTY

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MarketsMuse ETF market update profiling the latest A-Shares initiative out of China is courtesy of extract from coverage by ETFTrends’ Todd Shriber..

Todd Shriber, ETFtrends.com

CSOP Asset Management is not a household name in the U.S., but the Hong Kong-based asset manager could change that with today’s launch of its first U.S-listed exchange traded fund, the CSOP FTSE China A50 ETF (NYSEArca: AFTY).

The CSOP FTSE China A50 ETF is first ETF to be listed independently in the U.S. by a Chinese asset management company. Previous versions of A-shares ETFs to list in the U.S. have been partnerships between a U.S.- or Europe-based ETF issuer and a China-based asset manager. Those partnerships are pivotal to ETF issuers being able to offer U.S. funds that feature physical access to China’s A-shares because a Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII) meets Chinese regulatory requirements to be a foreign owner of A-shares.

For the full story from ETFtrends.com, please click here

Tech Talk

Trading Titan Point72 Gets to the Point: Big Data

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MarketMuse update courtesy of Bloomberg Business profiles investment firm, Point72 Asset Management, expands its jobs to hire more employees in order to collect and analyze data. 

Steven Cohen’s investment firm is looking for an edge in public data.

Point72 Asset Management, the successor to Cohen’s hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, has hired about 30 employees since the start of last year to build computer models that collect publicly available data and analyze it for patterns, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The hires are part of a project to expand quantitative investing, dubbed Aperio, that’s spearheaded by President Doug Haynes, said Mark Herr, a spokesman for the Stamford, Connecticut-based firm. Point72 is in the process of hiring a manager to oversee the strategy, he said, declining to comment on the number of professionals the firm has brought in so far.

Cohen, whose SAC Capital shut down last year and paid a record fine to settle charges of insider trading, joins Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates in pushing into computer-driven investing, an area dominated by a handful of big firms such as the $25 billion Renaissance Technologies and the $24 billion Two Sigma. The money managers are seeking to take advantage of advances in computing power and data availability to analyze large amounts of information.

“Data used to come to you in a trickle and today it comes in torrents,” Herr said. “The amount of publicly accessible data can now be compared to a fire hose of information. People who can read the signals most accurately and analyze them are the ones who will generate returns.”

For the entire article, click here.

ETF News

Apple’s Latest Move Could Hurt Investors

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MarketMuse blog update courtesy of InvestmentNews. With the anticipation of tech giant, Apple’s launch event today and last week’s announcement of  Apple joining the DOW, there is a lot to be excited about. However, InvestmentNews’ Jeff Benjamin points out how it could hurt investors. 

Investors and advisers who own shares of Apple Inc. (AAPL) cheered the news that it will soon be in the granddaddy of all stock indexes. But in all the hoopla, they may miss the fact that their portfolios could become overexposed to the tech giant.

On March 19, Apple is slated to replace AT&T Inc. (T) in the 119-year-old Dow Jones Industrial Average. The news sent Apple shares up $1.05, or 0.83%, to $127.46, in afternoon trading Friday as the Dow tumbled 1.44%.

As investible indexes go, the Dow is far from the most popular, but $12.5 billion of assets are invested in the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF. And DIA soon will include the tech giant, joining the S&P 500 and a plethora of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that already own it.

Apple, which started paying a dividend three years ago, is a Top 10 holding in a dozen dividend-focused ETFs that include Vanguard High Dividend Yield (VYM) and Wisdom Tree Total Dividend (DTD), as well as the Russell 1000 Index through iShares Russell 1000 (IWB) and iShares Russell 1000 Growth (IWF).

“There are probably some people who own the S&P and the Dow, and now they will own Apple in both indexes,” Mr. Rosenbluth said. “But, obviously, Apple is not the only stock held in multiple indexes.”

For the entire article from InvestmentNews, click here. 

Fixed Income, Global Macro Strategy, People Profiles

This Way To Emerging Market Debt..Global Macro Opinion

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MarketsMuse fixed income and global macro update courtesy of extract from blog post at II’s blog by James Craige, the head of emerging-markets debt at Stone Harbor Investment Partners in New York.

Two years of challenged returns, and high volatility, by emerging-markets local currency debt has prompted questions from investors. Is emerging-markets local currency debt still a valid asset class? How will factors such as lower commodities prices and changes in the U.S. Federal Reserve’s policy rate affect such debt? What is its market outlook? These are sound concerns, to be sure. But none of them alter our view that the asset class remains as legitimate as ever.

Craige_Jim_250Multiple factors, including weaker-than-expected growth, capital outflows, heightened foreign exchange volatility and geopolitical tensions, have contributed to the poor performance of local currency–denominated emerging-markets debt — particularly the forex component of returns. The halving of the market price of oil in the second half of 2014 created further concerns. We believe, however, that this constellation of factors is unlikely to reoccur in the same way or with the same intensity. At current valuations, emerging-markets local currency bonds are set to outperform other fixed-income segments.

Read who, why and how (to leverage this view point) via the full blog post at Institutional Investor

ETF News

California-based Lattice Jumps Into ETF Issuer Role with Three Fresh Products

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MarketsMuse update profiling Lattice Strategies roll-out of three new exchange-traded fund products is courtesy of extract from Zacks.com.. Here’s the snippet:

San Francisco-based investment management firm – Lattice Strategies – which believes that disciplined, intentional and systematic allocation of risks is the most influential contributor to long-term growth of capital, has recently forayed into the ETF world with three new products.

The products – Lattice U.S. Equity Strategy ETF (ROUS), Lattice Emerging Markets Strategy ETF (ROAM) and Lattice Developed Markets (ex-US) Strategy ETF (RODM) –charge 35 basis points, 65 basis points and 50 basis points respectively.

ROUS in Focus

ROUS tracks the investment results of the Lattice Risk-Optimized U.S. Equity Strategy Index to provide exposure to U.S. equities. The index seeks to improve returns by improving the factor-attributes of the portfolio along the dimensions of value, quality, and momentum. Also, the constituents of the index are risk-and factor-adjusted twice annually and also screened for liquidity.

Moreover, the index seeks to reduce concentration risk in large and mega cap stocks by diversifying well across individual stocks. This strategy ensures that none of the individual holdings have more than 1.5% exposure in the fund and the top ten holdings form just 10.47% of total fund assets. Currently, Best Buy, Kroger and Valero are the top three holdings in the fund.

Sector-wise, Financials dominates the fund with 19.3% allocations, closely followed by Technology, Consumer Discretionary, Healthcare and Industrials, each with double-digit exposure The fund is likely to face competition from a number of large-cap value ETFs. iShares Russell 1000 Value Index Fund (IWD) with an asset base of $26.3 billion and Vanguard Value ETF (VTV) with an asset base of $18.3 billion are some the popular products in the space.

To continue reading the story from Zacks.com, please click here

Fixed Income

Euro Bond Issuers and The Rate Race To Sub-Zero

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MarketsMuse.com fixed income coverage profiling below zero interest rates being offered on a growing assortment of freshly-minted European corporate bonds, as well as sovereign debt issues is courtesy of extract from WSJ story by Josie Cox, Ben Edwards and Anupreeta Das.

Investors snapped up a half-billion euros of French utility bonds that will pay them no interest, a groundbreaking deal that shows how corporations are rushing to take advantage of Europe’s efforts to keep interests rates low to try to revive the Continent’s economy. (Further reading: ECB gives start date for bond buying).

Next to tap the market may be Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which plans to raise around €3 billion, or $3.4 billion, in its first euro-denominated bond sale as soon as Thursday, according to a person familiar with the company.

The €500 million bond sale by GDF Suez SA came a day before the European Central Bank was scheduled to spell out details of how it will buy €60 billion a month in government and corporate bonds to fuel economic growth by pumping money in the region’s financial system.

In anticipation, investors have piled into European debt markets, pushing yields on some government bonds below zero. Yields fall as bond prices rise. The GDF Suez deal raises the prospect that companies may soon find investors willing to accept negative yields on bonds, essentially paying the borrowers to hold their debt.

With government bonds that trade at negative yields, investors are betting that further price gains will make up for the lost interest.

For the full story from the WSJ, please click here