Bond markets: Swimming not drowning

Regulators have been strident, if rather late, in their concern over the risk that short-term retail money now represents in today’s high yield corporate bond market. So when retail funds began to sell off in late July many braced for the worst. But by the end of August it was as if nothing had happened. The bond market’s ability to adapt may be greater than Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen believes.

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The now traditional summer disruption in the bond markets came this year with a long-overdue back up in high yield following vocal regulatory concern over risk in the leveraged finance market. But, unlike last year, despite record retail outflows from the asset class in mid-August, the sell-off seemed like a faint memory by the end of the month. Could the risks to the bond markets of short-term retail money have been overstated?

“We have been in a bull market for credit since 2009,” says Richard Zogheb, co-head of capital markets origination for the Americas at Citi in New York.

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