Healthcare has been ground zero for COVID-19 since the virus took hold in early March. How the industry has reacted, and how lenders and equity investors are dealing with this new world order, is the subject of this special series. To get started, we spoke to a friend who runs the healthcare capital markets desk…
“Time to go to cash,” we announced one night at the dinner table. It was early June. The Dow had nearly climbed back to its February 12 peak. The moment seemed ripe for a personal portfolio move. “What does that mean?” our six-year old daughter asked. “It means Daddy wants to put our money in…
In our just-completed series on high-yield bonds [link], we conclude that issuer and investor activity has largely been driven by technical factors: near-zero interest rates, the Fed’s support of fallen angels, and skewed-to-worse ratings for leveraged loans. If this is the environment in the liquid market, how should investors be thinking of the illiquid market,…
What has been described as “massive” new issuance in the high-yield market led to the most deal volume for May ($48 billion) since 2003, according LevFin Insight’s Matt Fuller. As our Chart of the Week depicts, cash inflows to bond funds totaled over $35 billion in the past nine weeks, per Refinitiv Lipper. That includes…
We continue our special series on high-yield bonds with a look at more deals in the market. Our tour guide on this trip, Matthew Fuller of LevFin Insights, identified several transactions as signs of market recovery. Northwest Fiber (Caa1/CCC), with a new issuer name, Ziply Fiber, came out with a loan/bond buyout of Frontier Communication…
One of our faithful readers emailed the other day: “Hey, I noticed it’s been a while since you wrote about the high-yield market. Would love to get your insights on what’s going on there. Seems like a lot of activity recently. Trying to figure it out. Thanks.” Help is on the way. For assistance, we…
The Bank of England has projected the COVID-19 pandemic will cause GDP for the United Kingdom to decline 14% this year. That’s the worst economic performance in more than three centuries. In 1706 (when the Bank of England was twelve years old) Great Britain was a very different place. With the Industrial Revolution fifty years in…
As we wrap up our multi-part series on the COVID-19 crisis, we turn our attention to the path ahead, as unclear as that is. Or as one economist put it succinctly: “Anyone who thinks we’re going to keep moving up in a straight line is living in La-La Land.” The good news is that the…
“The GFC was a crisis that began on Wall Street and spread to Main Street. COVID-19 is a crisis that began on Main Street and spread to Wall Street.” That’s how the capital markets head of a leading private credit firm contrasted the origins of the two worst downturns since the Great Depression. And with…
On March 12 we began this special series on COVID-19 with a sense that America would soon be forced out of schools, offices, and all group activity. Little did we know six weeks later 97% (according to one study) of the US population is either at home or sheltering in place. This state of affairs…