And then there seems to have been a third hedge taken out, described in today's Wall Street Journal as "protection on investment-grade bonds" - which appears to have been protection against the risk that the second hedge went wrong.
The other metric that we follow very closely is credit spreads, and this is the difference between the yield between the sub-investment-grade bonds and the ten-year Treasuries, where the recent monthly returns in the stock market is favorable, when credit spreads are normal, compared to when spreads are very wide.
While his dollars were enjoying the security of the world's safest investment - Treasury bonds have never failed to pay out - most US investors were taking a financial "rain-check" and cancelling their summer vacations.
Yields on junk bonds have fallen over the past two weeks, and the gap in yields between investment-grade bonds and junk has narrowed, from 688 basis points to 600.
Based on prices, the expected risk is low in Treasury securities and investment-grade bonds.
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That being said, we see the expected risk in Treasury securities and investment-grade bonds as low.
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That week, no investment-grade bonds were issued, for the first time (holidays aside) since 1981.
Investors in American investment-grade bonds get the same yield as they would for junk in Japan.
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Smith Breeden is advising most clients to hold investment-grade bonds with durations of four months to six years.
Mr. Albright said his firm has been selling investment-grade bonds and buying global stocks over the course of this year.
Nor would it make much difference were Social Security to be invested in other assets such as equities, investment-grade bonds and property.
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Investment-grade bonds at one point during the day were suffering a deeper selloff than at the worst of the Lehman Brothers crisis, according to Tim Backshall, chief strategist at Credit Derivatives Research.
Since last autumn, according to CSFB, an investment bank, investment-grade bonds have returned 16.4% and junk bonds 35% (as James Grant, the editor of an eponymous newsletter, has pointed out, you can't call them high-yield any more).
In the year to date, loans are running in the middle of the pack, trailing equities and high-yield bonds, while beating 10-year Treasuries and investment-grade corporate bonds.
Investment-grade corporate bonds yield 3 percent and riskier "junk" bonds yield just under 6 percent.
The JPMorgan Domestic High Yield Index is an index composed of non-investment-grade corporate bonds.
According to Morgan Stanley, high-quality investment-grade corporate bonds are now at their cheapest since 1925.
Since China's leadership transition last month, investors have demanded less additional yield on the lowest-rated investment-grade corporate bonds compared with government bonds.
Also, as the economy improves, there is a tendency for interest rates to increase, which in turn can have a volatile effect on Investment-Grade Corporate Bonds.
Investment-grade corporate bonds, which carry only a sliver of default risk, now yield an average 1.8 percentage points more than Treasurys, up from 1.3 points in early 2000.
In fact, for the third year in a row the default rate for non-investment grade bonds stood at 1.9 percent, Fitch Ratings said Monday in a special report.
Investment-grade corporate bonds are delivering 3.2%.
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In addition, the IOF rate on non-resident investment in long-term corporate bonds with a duration over four years is being reduced from 6% to zero, with the goal of stimulating private long-term investment and financing, the government said in a press release on Friday morning.
The multitudes of bond haters continue to screech about how overvalued Treasurys and investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds are, but some split-rated bonds deserve to be in your portfolio.
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Over the past year, both investment-grade and junk bonds have had their strongest rallies in history.
Among the investment-grade companies selling bonds are Google ( GOOG), Norfolk Southern ( NSC) and Walt Disney ( DIS).
Her financial adviser then will shift some of her savings out of an annuity and into high-yielding bonds and real-estate investment trusts, aiming to double the return on that money to 10% a year.
Hence most investors flocked to the next best thing: fixed-income instruments such as investment grade bonds, U.S. Treasuries and even high-yielding junk bonds.
Active managers in intermediate-term securities fared better than managers in long-term securities, and managers in investment grade bonds fared better than managers in high-yield securities.
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