The New Bond Market

최근 채권 시장에 무슨 일이 ??

- 고위험채권 ( 또는 고수익채권 ) 펀드에서 가격이 슬금슬금 미끄러지다가 결국 대량 환매 사태 발생

- 고객들의 환매 요구에 채권펀드 운용사가 대응하지 못하고 지급 정지를 선언 ( 펀드 부도 )

- 이에 따라 고위험채권 ( 또는 고수익채권 ) 펀드 전반으로 환매 요구가 확산되는 조짐

WSJ 의견 주장

- 지난 서브프라임 금융위기이후 은행 들에 대하여 규제가 강화되면서 ( 도드 프랭크 법 ) 은행들은 고위험채권 ( 또는 고수익채권 ) 에 투자 할 수 없슴

- 은행권이 손해를 입지 않고 있으므로 최근 채권펀드 부도에 따른 위기는 서브프라임 위기처럼 대규모 금융위기로 확대되지는 않을 것

필자 의견 ( 추측 )

- 고위험채권 ( 또는 고수익채권 ) 펀드는 기업 들의 구조조정 과정에서 자금 지원 역할을 함.

- 기업들의 부도사태가 확산되더라도 은행권이 고위험채권 ( 또는 고수익채권 ) 펀드를 매입하는 것에 의한 자금 지원이 금지되어 있슴

- 기업들의 부도 사태가 예상보다 크게 확대 될 가능성이 있슴

- 우량 금융기관이 매입 할 수 없으므로 고위험채권 ( 또는 고수익채권 ) 펀드의 가격 저점은 쉽게 형성 되지 않을 듯

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비관론

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-junk-bond-selloff-is-getting-very-scary-2015-12-11

Why the junk bond selloff is getting very scary

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/5-things-that-show-the-junk-bond-market-is-in-big-trouble-2015-12-11

5 things that show the junk-bond market is in big trouble

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낙관론

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/whats-really-happening-in-the-junk-bond-market-2015-12-14

Opinion: What’s really happening in the junk-bond market

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-bond-market-1450139392

The New Bond Market

Encourage record sales of bonds, while telling banks not to buy them.

Dec. 14, 2015 7:29 p.m. ET

The good news about the junk-bond selloff shaking financial markets is that taxpayer-backed banks generally aren’t absorbing the losses. The bad news is that with America’s new financial architecture it doesn’t take much to trigger a steep decline.

Junk or high-yield bonds are loans to companies of questionable credit quality. And a popular exchange traded-fund that tracks the junk-bond market is down nearly 8% since early November and about 12% on the year. The Federal Reserve has kept short-term interest rates near zero for seven years and bought trillions in bonds to push all bond rates down—in a deliberate effort to encourage investors to seek out higher rates and accept the risk that goes with them. Investors obliged.

According to Dealogic, U.S. junk-bond issuance hit a record $361 billion in 2013, after $355 billion in 2012. Those totals were more than double the volumes in the years before the financial crisis. Investors also began to see junk bonds as less risky, judging by the spreads. This is the interest paid on the bonds over and above what investors can receive holding U.S. Treasury bonds.

According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which maintains a popular measure of this spread, the long-run average since 1990 is 558 basis points. But with the Fed encouraging risk-taking, it fell below 340 in June of 2014. Investors weren’t demanding much extra compensation for the extra risk.

Meanwhile, the Fed and other regulators were also limiting the ability of large banks to buy these instruments. So while the junk-bond supply was expanding, the demand among big banks has been constrained by regulations in the wake of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law.

The result is that these bonds are now more likely to be held by corporate treasuries and mutual funds—institutions that carry less leverage and aren’t backed by taxpayers. This is good for bank stability in a systemic crisis (assuming the assets regulators tell banks to hold aren’t even worse). But many on Wall Street have been wondering what will happen when a market downturn occurs and banks are largely not available as distressed-bond buyers when investors wish to sell.

Well, here we are. It’s tempting to call this a stress test of the new markets that Washington has created, but the underlying economic conditions aren’t all that stressful—yet. Through November the default rate on junk bonds was 2.6%, not all that high considering defaults spiked to nearly 12% after the financial crisis. Defaults exceeded 12% after a recession in the early 1990s and were beyond 14% in the early 2000s.

Yet on Monday the high-yield spread over Treasurys had climbed to 710 basis points—more than twice the level of late June 2014, and investors are getting whacked. The risk of any illiquid market is that a mild correction can turn into a larger panic if sellers can’t find buyers. one place to watch in particular is the energy industry, where borrower fundamentals do look bad thanks to the Fed-inspired commodity-price boom and bust.

The post-crisis meddling in markets was done in the name of reducing risk, but it has created new risks of its own.