Coronavirus Roundtable - The Yield Squeeze And Income Opportunities

Published Fri, 17 Apr 2020 06:30:28 -0400 on Seeking Alpha

Fixed income is supposed to be a stable area for investors, but events of the past two months have shaken that.
The Fed and market forces have stabilized things, but our panel suggests there are opportunities left behind.
We go over the different parts of the fixed income world to see what the outlook according to our diverse panel.
The coronavirus outbreak and the effects of COVID-19 have gone deeper and wider than most people would have expected. That applies just as much to markets as anywhere. Whether it's a tech sector that is supporting our new work from home or re-rating as expensive EV/Sales multiples make less sense; a healthcare industry under the spotlight to find a vaccine, a cure, or provide treatment to patients; or various parts of the financial sector that have shown acute strain as the economy goes into the freezer for a few weeks, and what increasingly looks like a few months or more of containment - there are no real safe havens or quiet zones.
The broader fixed income sector would seem to be safer than equity. But in the immediate clutches of the March crash, spreads blew out and liquidity grew scarce. And indeed a lot of the Fed's muscle has gone into supporting the fixed income market to keep capital flowing. So what's going on, and what does it mean for investors in the space?
We asked a panel of authors focused on income funds, BDCs, high yield, and bonds to weigh in. They are:
Nicholas Marshi, author of BDC Reporter Daily News Donald van Deventer, author of Corporate Bond Investor Jeremy Lakosh, author of High Yield Digest BDC Buzz, author of Sustainable Dividends Alpha Gen Capital, author of Yield Hunting: Alt Inc Opps Our questions are in the header font, with authors' responses following. Disclosures are available at the end of the article.
This feels like ancient history now, but one of the more jarring shocks of the initial sell-off/crash was the impact on investment grade corporate bonds. What aftershocks have you seen... Read more