After a couple of positive weeks for both high yield bonds and equities, both turned negative as we saw a volatile week for oil and the US dollar and Friday’s jobs report causing further uncertainty about the Fed’s interest rate actions for 2016. The high yield market fell 1.1% on the week, ending with the yield and spread on the Bank of America High Yield Index (BAML) 42bps and 36bps wider at 9.58% and 810bps, respectively. The yield on the US 10 year Treasury continued to move lower to levels not seen in about nine months.

After posting the first positive week of fund flows last week, we saw a slightly negative week on the fund flow side as exchange traded and mutual funds reported outflows totaling $40.9mil. On the new issue front, we saw a week similar to last in terms of total proceeds generated, with five deals pricing for total proceeds of $3.5 billion.

The Bank of America Merrill Lynch High Yield Index monitors the performance of below investment grade U.S. dollar-denominated corporate bonds publicly issued in the U.S. domestic market.  Index data sourced from Bloomberg. BAML HY represents the index yield for the designated date, while return/change represent the index return for the period ending date. Yield referenced is the yield-to-worst and spread referenced is the spread-to-worst.