Thanks to good trades prior to M&A, credit downgrades, and defaults, the insurers in the top quintile for dealer-network size achieved about 0.84 percentage point higher annual returns on corporate bonds, according to a recent study.
“We increasingly view a large-scale pullback in spending driven by uncertainty about tariffs, DOGE layoffs, and weakness in equities as a non-trivial tail risk.”
“Issuers are taking advantage of calm markets, low volatility, and tight spreads before Trump’s tariffs might spoil the party. ... For a record amount of issuance, there must also be a large amount of investors ready to put money at work. This is indeed the case.”
Moody’s Ratings updated its policies to make it simpler to determine how much of hybrid bond issues to consider as equity. “That shift in methodology helped to fuel the rebirth of this market.”
According to a T. Rowe Price portfolio manager, the spread between green bonds and non-green bonds from the same corporate is in the range of 0 bps to 1 bps, which isn’t “economically appealing for an issuer.” Sovereigns are getting about a 7 bps premium, on average.