7% High Yield Exposure For 0.05%: The Cheapest Tool In The Shed
SPHY's 7.10% SEC yield at a 2.89-year duration for five basis points is the honest baseline for junk income.
29,000 Jobs. Stocks Up. Bonds Down. One of These Markets Is Wrong.
September payrolls missed by two thirds, July revised to negative 10,000, and stocks rallied while the 10-year still closed higher at 5.28 percent. Stocks and bonds disagreed about the same number.
QYLD Pays 12%. Its SEC Yield Is 0.02%. Here Is Why
The widest distribution-to-SEC-yield gap I have covered: what QYLD's option premium machine actually sells.
BlackRock's 12% Junk CEF Trades 12% Below NAV. The Discount Just Doubled
HYT pays 12% while its discount to NAV widened from -6.49% to -11.68%. Value entry or distribution warning.
The Fed Is Not Fighting Inflation. It Is Fighting the Gas Pump.
Core CPI sits at 2.4 percent, essentially at target. The headline gap is gasoline, up 27.4 percent on the year and over a third of August's entire monthly increase. The Fed hiked into it anyway.
The Largest BDC In America Pays 10%. Its Book Value Just Ticked Down
ARCC's $29.5 billion book pays $0.48 a quarter, but core EPS is $0.47 and NAV slipped to $19.59.
The Most Expensive Money of the Year Hides Inside the Cheapest Stocks
The 10-year climbed from 4.24 to 5.25 percent this year. Small caps already did the math: a -0.54 monthly correlation between rates and the Russell 2000, and an 11-point gap to the Nasdaq 100 since July.
Four Central Banks Went Four Ways This Month. Every Long End Went the Same Way.
The Fed, the ECB and the BoJ all hiked in September, the BoE held, and China eased. The 10-year ends of the US, Germany and Japan all climbed anyway. The risk being priced is fiscal, not monetary.
JPMorgan's $44 Billion Nasdaq Income Machine Pays 13%. Read The Fine Print
JEPQ's 13.32% 30-day SEC yield is option premium, not a coupon. What the income machine sells to pay you.
A Market Divided: Two Signals Shout Risk, Two Whisper Caution
The S&P 500 sits 7.36% above its 200-day average and utilities just made new lows, but gold outran lumber by nineteen points over thirteen weeks and long bonds led August. Two risk-on, two risk-off: the split itself is the signal.
The Shock Absorber Is Gone
The mortgage-to-Treasury spread compressed from 320 basis points to about 185, in line with its 20-year average, just as the 10-year broke to 5.18%, its highest since 2007. Every basis point now lands on the buyer.
The Delinquency Cycle Already Turned
Bank card delinquencies peaked at 3.22% in mid-2024 and have fallen five straight quarters to 2.85%. The consumer crack everyone braced for happened, quietly, and ended while nobody repriced it.