Even some of Mr Monti's ministers accept privately that one explanation for the widening bond spread is a gradual loss of the government's reforming momentum.
Another benefit is that bond funds spread out their positions over many individual issues, and this can reduce credit (default) risk.
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Defendant Bond allegedly spread dangerous chemicals on objects her rival was likely to touch, including a mailbox (smell a federal issue here?).
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Either way--with a swap or a margined bond trade--you pocket the spread, unless and until the corporate bond gets into trouble, at which point you're sitting on a painful capital loss.
Jitters that plagued the bond markets for weeks spread into equities in the last few days.
That's a 4% "spread" over the less-risky 10-year U.S. Treasury bond, which is as wide a spread as has existed in years, says Orest Mandzy of Newtown, Pa.
The spread between German bond yields fell from roughly 15 percentage points to a little over 11 percentage points.
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With all the hysterical talk about slowing takeovers with legislation, about curbing the spread of junk bond acquisitions and foreign buying of U.S. assets, few people seem aware that our current tax code--passed by Congress and approved in general by the business community--provides a huge bounty to people whether Americans or foreigners, who want to take over companies.
That would widen the spread of these countries' bond yields over German yields.
This data helps to shed light on the relationship between stock returns and growth, by honing in on the relationship, that is the spread, between stock and bond valuations on the one hand and growth on the other.
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In the year to date, however, narrowing spread levels have helped high-yield bond returns narrowly exceed those of loans (see below).
The spread between emerging-market and treasury bond yields reached a record low of 169 basis points (a bit over one-and-a-half percentage points) in April and is still only around 185 points.
The high yield bond market gets my money with its 500 basis points spread over 10-year Treasuries.
Interestingly, the 10-year French spread to the Dutch ten-year benchmark bond has hit over 60bps according to Bloomberg, far wider than at any time in the history of the eurozone.
Similarly, the spread of the two-year Italian government bond over the German benchmark widened to about 130 basis points today from 102 basis points a week ago and 17 at the start of the year.
The difference between Treasury and junk bond yields increased to 743 basis points, the widest the spread has been since early December.
This widening spread is a measure of how different the perceptions of bond yields and money market rates have become.
The spread on the 30 year U.S. Treausry Bond and the 2 year Treasury Note yields were moving closer together, currently at 238 basis points.
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The euro crisis has spread to Italy, the world's third-largest bond market, which means the stock of rich-world government debt that is considered safe has shrunk dramatically.
The subprime meltdown, which began about this time last year with the bankruptcy of New Century Financial, has spread throughout the credit markets and has dragged down banks and bond insurers along with it.
The subprime meltdown, which began about this time last year with the bankruptcy of New Century Financial (other-otc: NEWC - news - people ), has spread throughout the credit markets and has dragged down banks and bond insurers along with it.
To diversify, they go to investment companies who spread that risk out among equity fund managers, emerging market specialists, bond specialists and currency funds.
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The NOB spread now appears to have bottomed and the technical action of two key bond ETFs is also consistent with a further decline in yields.
The spread, or the gap, of the two-year Spanish government bond over a similar German benchmark widened to 165 basis points from 129 basis points a week ago and 53 basis points at the start of the year.
That said, the Bank of American Merrill Lynch High-Grade Bond Master Index is up 3.75% through April 30 as a result of spread compression across the credit markets from the more lofty levels of the fourth quarter.
That is why investors have shunned Greek debt to the extent that the 10 year Greek Government bond closed on May 20th 2011 at a yield of 16.73%, which is a spread of 13.66% or 1366 basis points over German 10 year paper.
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After breaking their euro-era highs last week, Portuguese benchmark 10-year bond yields surged to 8.18% by 1:39 PM in New York, taking their spread with German bunds to 487 basis points.
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It was talking of a spread of near 400 or 600 basis points over the equivalent U.S. 10-year bond.
Each year, I analyze the primary drivers of asset class long-term returns including risk as measured by implied volatility, expected earnings growth based on GDP estimates and foreign business expansion, market implied inflation based on the spread between long-term Treasury Bonds and TIPS, and current cash payouts from interest and dividends on bond and stock indexes.
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