All articles by Caroline Hay – Page 9
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Features
Tough going for investors
Narrowing credit spreads are good for the borrower and great for the lender or investor if they own the debt while it improves. However, as spreads diminish, so too do prospects for excess returns. Credit spreads have been shrinking for some years now and have reached record lows for some ...
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Features
Europe's high yield comes of age
Last year was good for European high yield – not just in terms of investment returns, but issuance volumes last year were at record levels, passing those achieved in the now notorious Year 2000 at the height of the telecom bubble. Although the period between the spring of 2000 through ...
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Features
Govvies back in the limelight
In these times of greatly diversified capital markets within Europe and exciting developments in corporate bonds, high yield or credit derivatives, it has become uncommon for the very low yielding government bond markets to be the real focus of investor attention. But as European and US interest rates have started ...
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Features
The 'shadow' ECB
At the end of 2002 the editor of the German daily Handelsblatt decided it might be an interesting idea to get together a group of leading European economists and strategists and let them shadow the European Central Bank’s decisions and actions on European monetary policy. Today that group of 18, ...
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Asset Class Reports
Those twin deficits
So the US has the same president for the next four years, and it seems to be a case of ‘better the devil you know’, as far as bond and currency market participants are concerned. For Bruno Crastes, head of global fixed income at Credit Agricole Asset Management (CAAM), bond ...
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Features
Growth at risk
New highs for oil prices, the latest report on the (non-) existence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, hurricanes, terrorist bombs, and G7 meetings, and the usual slew of economic data that keeps on coming – all in all just another average couple of weeks for world watchers. Capital ...
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Features
Politics holds Russian key
Although many investors are quite enthusiastic about emerging markets and emerging market bonds, Russia might not be especially high on the list of desirable destinations for investor money. The default crisis of 1998 left many investors stranded and nursing huge losses and is still clear in the memory of many ...
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Features
Explosive growth of credit products
There has been such rapid growth in the market of credit derivatives, it is surely an area that investors are looking at, if not already investing in. The market for these products began in earnest in the mid-1990s. Less than one decade later, it is expected to exceed $4trn (E6trn) ...
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Features
Japan's economy - turning a corner again
It is 15 years since Japan’s bubble burst and several nascent recoveries have fizzled out along the way and the economy has repeatedly dipped back onto recession. This time, however, things may at last be different. Growth surprises have, unusually for Japan, been to the upside and the GDP report ...
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Features
Not short on uncertainty
Now that we know who’s to be running against George W Bush in November’s US elections, that’s one less political uncertainty to have to factor in. There are, however, plenty of outstanding uncertainties to worry investors across the world. For fixed income investors, one of the key issues seems to ...
