New single-family home sales retreated again last month, falling by nearly 17% in February on an annualized basis, the Census Bureau reports. That’s the biggest monthly fall since last May.
Daily Archives: March 23, 2011
Strategic Briefing | 3.23.2011 | High Yield Bonds
Junk Bonds: What to Do Now
The Wall Street Journal | Mar 22
It may be time to take some junk out of your trunk. Until recently, high-yield or “junk” bonds have been on a tear, posting double-digit returns in 2009 and 2010 and sending prices higher and yields close to all-time lows. But investors are starting to pare back their appetite for risky assets. For the first time since early December, there were net outflows from high-yield bond funds last week—some $801.9 million—according to EPFR Global, a Boston research firm that tracks fund flows.
ProShares Debuts Short Junk Bond ETF (SJB)
ETFdb | Mar 22
ProShares, the Maryland-based firm known for a suite of leveraged and inverse ETFs, has launched the first ETF offering daily inverse exposure to junk bonds. The ProShares Short High Yield (SJB) will seek to deliver daily results that correspond to -100% of the daily change in the iBoxx $ Liquid High Yield Index. That index serves as the underlying for the ultra-popular iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond Fund (HYG), which has more than $8 billion in assets and consists of more than 400 individual junk bonds.