Know What's Happening in Bonds
Know What's Happening in Bonds
China accelerates sell‑off of U.S. Treasury bills, shedding $50 bn
China reduced its U.S. Treasury bill holdings from $682.6 bn in November 2025 to $633.4 bn in March 2026, a $50 bn decline in four months and the lowest level since 2008. The drawdown follows larger sell‑offs during the 2019 trade war and the 2022 sanctions wave, and coincides with Beijing ordering commercial banks to liquidate $70‑$200 bn of T‑bills.
Hong Kong's finance chief Paul Chan signaled openness to allowing local universities to issue tertiary education bonds to fund the Northern Metropolis University Town project. The plan expands the campus area to 100 hectares and includes a third medical school, with the 2024 budget allocating an additional HK$10 billion in loans for construction. Economists suggest 3‑5 year bonds at roughly 3% interest, potentially backed by government guarantees to achieve sovereign‑level ratings. Lawmakers highlighted faster financing compared with traditional LegCo or UGC approvals.
S&P Global Ratings warns that collateral values backing Hong Kong banks' commercial property loans will keep declining through 2026, reflecting a market that has yet to find a bottom. The Bank of East Asia disclosed a HK$723 million valuation loss in...
Economic Calendar for Thurs. Feb 26th 8:30am - Initial jobless claims: Expected 216k; Prior 206k - Continuing Jobless Claims: Expected 1.86M; Prior 1.869M 10:00 - Fed’s Bowman speaks 1:00pm - 7 Year Note Auction: Prior 4.018%
People keep telling me I'm wrong about the US fiscal boost this year, but the IMF just published this.. thats bigger than our estimates btw https://t.co/HKAuw6DenI
Investor demand for U.S. corporate bonds has surged to historic levels, making new issuances harder to access and allocations tighter. Barclays’ analysis of TRACE data shows competition in investment‑grade debt is up 15% and high‑yield debt up 30% compared with...
Indian banks are accelerating purchases of government bonds as their sovereign‑debt holdings edge toward the RBI’s 18% regulatory minimum. In February, state‑owned lenders bought a net ₹225.8 billion ($2.5 billion), the largest monthly purchase recorded since Bloomberg began tracking in 2006. Their...
The February 2026 bulletin outlines three post‑pandemic credit‑market shifts that have eased financial conditions: bank‑funding cost spreads fell about 70 basis points, variable mortgage‑rate spreads narrowed roughly 65 basis points, and business‑credit supply expanded with non‑bank lenders gaining market share. These...
International Seaways reported Q3 2025 net income of $71 million ($1.42 per share) and adjusted EBITDA of $108 million, while generating roughly $63 million of free cash flow. The company ended the quarter with $985 million of total liquidity, a cash balance of $413 million...
Chicago’s general‑obligation bonds were downgraded by both KBRA and Fitch to BBB‑plus from A‑minus, with a negative outlook maintained. The agencies cited a shrinking fund balance, tightening liquidity, rising pension costs and consecutive operating deficits. The downgrade precedes the city’s...
Morningstar DBRS assigned a BBB rating with a Stable trend to ARC Resources Ltd.'s senior unsecured notes offering, comprising C$400 million at 3.349% due 2029 and C$550 million at 4.104% due 2033. The company plans to use net proceeds to refinance existing...
A&D Mortgage issued $602.7 million of non‑prime residential mortgage‑backed securities (RMBS) through its 2026‑NQM2 transaction, backed by 1,793 loans with four months of seasoning. The pool is dominated by single‑family homes (68.4 %) and condos (20.5 %), with 48.1 % of borrowers self‑employed and...
Tokenized US Treasury market grew to $10.8 billion, up $1.9 billion since the start of 2026. The sector has expanded 50× since 2024, propelled by BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), now worth over $1.2 billion. Growth persisted despite a broad crypto...
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America are urging clients to buy Venezuelan global bonds that carry large amounts of unpaid interest, known as accrued coupons. The banks argue that these distressed securities could deliver outsized returns if Venezuela...
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther unveiled a $500 million affordable‑housing bond framework dividing funds into four buckets: $150 million for new construction and preservation, $125 million for transitional shelters, homeowner upgrades and supportive housing, $175 million for land acquisition linked to transit‑oriented and mixed‑use development,...
Meta is planning to introduce stablecoin‑based payments in the second half of 2026 by partnering with a third‑party provider, avoiding the need to issue its own token. The initiative leverages the 2025 GENIUS Act’s regulatory framework, positioning digital dollars as...
Fixed income specialist Cohen & Company announced that its European subsidiary raised €481.5 million for the PriDe IV subordinated insurance debt fund, the firm’s largest European vintage to date. The fund continues the company’s strategy of providing Tier II capital to small and...
There's lots of buzz about 10-year Treasury yield falling to 4%. But when you look at this yield vs US peers - hedging those yields back into US Dollars - the US picture isn't nearly so sanguine. The days when...
The rolling 40-day (2 month) correlation between $USDJPY and the US-Japan 2-year yield spread has rebound to a stronger positive (+0.6) after 10 months of inversion. Will it just start syncing up or will this gap in carry standing close?...
XAI Octagon Floating Rate & Alternative Income Trust (XFLT) has been downgraded to a sell as earnings continue to decline and growth remains limited. The fund now trades at a roughly 20.21 % discount to NAV, reflecting persistent portfolio challenges rather...
Not surprising to see some cheapening of very rich 5s before the auction later today. 2s5s10s up a few bps from Monday's Citrini low. Interesting to see if the move has legs post-auction https://t.co/ZQjjNm6NwT
Oppenheimer has added former Stern Brothers managing director Vien Le to its public finance investment‑banking group in Los Angeles. Le brings more than two decades of municipal finance experience, having advised the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the state...
Allstate has priced and closed two catastrophe‑bond series, Sanders Re IV Ltd. (2026‑1A) and Sanders Re III Ltd. (2026‑1B), delivering a record $1.2 billion of multi‑peril, multi‑year reinsurance in a single market visit. The issuance comprises four tranches—two four‑year and two...
The Bloomberg Intelligence FIC team examined global credit trends, focusing on a surge in Asian convertible bonds driven by higher rates, equity volatility, and issuer demand for cheap funding, while noting a slowdown in Chinese dollar bond issuance as firms...
Hiscox Capital Partners lifted its insurance‑linked securities (ILS) assets under management to $1.5 billion as of 1 January 2026, driven by $330 million of new inflows over the past year. The inflows offset planned capital returns and boosted deployable capital for the January reinsurance...
Sustainable debt issuance slipped 12% year‑on‑year to about $1.4 trillion in 2025, marking the slowest growth in five years, even as clean‑energy investment hit a record $2.3 trillion. Research from ING expects a modest rebound to roughly $1.62 trillion in 2026, with Europe...
CME Group reported a record 36,328,151 open interest contracts in U.S. Treasury futures and options on February 19, surpassing its previous high from November 2025. The milestone spans the entire yield curve, with new peaks in 2‑year, 5‑year, 10‑year, and...
Sponsor‑backed merger and acquisition activity surged to $165 billion in December 2025, marking the second‑largest monthly volume in the past decade, just shy of the $168 billion peak recorded in April 2021. Data from Mergermarket shows that leveraged buyouts and other sponsor‑driven deals now...
Crescent Capital BDC reported Q4 2025 net investment income of $0.46 per share, delivering 110% coverage of its $0.42 regular dividend. Net asset value slipped to $19.28 per share, driven by $0.15 per share of unrealized losses from tariff‑impacted borrowers....
The Bank of Thailand’s Monetary Policy Committee is expected to leave its policy rate unchanged at 1.25% during Wednesday’s meeting, buoyed by a stronger‑than‑expected 2.5% year‑on‑year GDP growth in Q4 2025 and a clearer political environment after the election. Economists...
Panoro Energy ASA announced a series of fixed‑income investor meetings, appointing Arctic Securities and DNB Carnegie as joint bookrunners and SB1 Markets as co‑manager. The company is considering a $150 million tap issuance of its senior secured bond, pending market conditions...
Loomis Sayles sees the expanding private‑credit market as a source of higher yields and structural protections for fixed‑income investors. To exploit this, the firm created a dedicated Private Credit Team that works alongside its public‑markets portfolio managers, credit researchers, and legal...
Western Asset High Yield Opportunity Fund (HYI) converted from a term‑structured to a perpetual fund last year, prompting the discount to widen to roughly its historical average. The fund’s non‑leveraged, high‑yield strategy delivers a 10.23% distribution yield, but semi‑annual and...
This is an incredibly thought-provoking global macro piece from @infraa_. If the gov't revenue decline from AI disruption of white collar workers isn't counter-balanced by taxation from AI productivity, we could be tip-toeing into a potential Sovereign Bond Implosion....
What my post from December 2023 overlooked was the massive expansion in private credit. Private credit stepped in aggressively to fill financing gaps, refinance maturities, and provide bridge capital, delaying the "wall of maturities" many buyers were eager to capitalize on. Now...
BAM Mutual announced the hiring of Philip Moos, a 30‑year municipal sales veteran from Wells Fargo, to bolster its municipal capital markets team. Moos will report to Bryan Baebler and focus on expanding BAM’s secondary‑market insurance business with institutional investors. The insurer currently...
At its Galveston meeting, the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) Board voted to purchase reinsurance and catastrophe bonds only up to the statutory 1‑in‑50 year probable maximum loss (PML) level for 2026. The revised funding target of $4.3051 billion translates to...
The article examines how Treasury bond returns move together with U.S. stock returns, showing that comovement has shifted from positive in the 1980s to negative in the 2000s and back to positive after 2022. Using rolling 90‑day regressions on daily...
Bloomberg’s latest Pro Tips episode demonstrates how analysts can accelerate issuer credit research using CRAN, the Credit Research Analysis tool on the Bloomberg Terminal. The tutorial walks users through data retrieval, rating analysis, and key financial metrics in minutes. Bloomberg...
Chart shows the shape and evolution of the yield curve (3-Month Treasury yields (blue) and 10-Year Treasury yields (red)) from Feb 2023 to Feb 2026. It's been a wild ride from the extreme inversion in 2023 to normalization beginning Q4 2025....
Investors are showing strong appetite for GSE‑eligible loans embedded in non‑agency mortgage‑backed securities, tightening spreads and lifting prices across the segment. The surge reflects limited agency supply and the premium investors assign to loans that meet Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac eligibility...
In January 2026, fixed‑income ETFs attracted $56 billion of net inflows, pushing total inflows to over $105 billion across ETFs and mutual funds. Nearly half of the bond‑ETF money went into actively managed funds such as PIMCO’s PYLD and iShares BINC, while...
Home prices edged higher in the latest quarter, while Chase announced a modest rate discount to spur loan demand. Retail giant Bed Bath & Beyond entered the mortgage origination space, signaling non‑traditional players’ interest in housing finance. Bayview Capital began stocking GSE‑eligible loans...
"March has historically been the weakest month for munis over the past 30 years. Even so, we continue to favor the long end of the muni curve, where tax-equivalent yields remain attractive." -Larry Adam, Raymond James
Bonds may be setting up the surprise of 2026. Equities own the narrative. Duration owns the asymmetry. If growth cools, fixed income becomes leadership. Framework here: https://t.co/NWtS4ggYI5 @JDHatfield_ICAP @InfraCap
The Oklahoma Supreme Court is set to rule on $1.45 billion of winter‑storm bonds issued by Oklahoma Gas & Electric and Public Service Company of Oklahoma. Republican lawmakers allege the Oklahoma Corporation Commission violated state audit and ethics rules when authorizing...
UBS’s Matt Mish lays out a scenario for credit involving “rapid, aggressive AI disruption.” US high yield, leveraged loan & private credit default rates could rise to 3–6%, 8–10%, & 14–15%, respectively: Mish. “Defaults could approach ~$420bn, w/losses of roughly...
2y auctions during roll week are usually more interesting esp when TU (ZT) roll is this nasty
A consortium of leading financial institutions executed the first cross‑border, intraday repurchase agreement using tokenized U.K. government bonds on the Canton Network. The trade featured the inaugural cross‑currency swap of tokenized gilts for tokenized deposits, with smart contracts encoding interest...
Zurich‑based Plenum Investments announced that its assets under management have topped US$2 billion, roughly doubling the figure achieved in July 2023. The growth stems from four UCITS catastrophe‑bond and insurance‑linked securities funds, which now enjoy institutional‑scale assets. The firm’s organic expansion reflects...
#TurkeyWatch 🇹🇷: Turkey's main stock index, the BIST 100, is up nearly 24% YTD, and foreign investors are piling into Turkish bonds and equities. Turkey's disinflation story is gaining credibility and capital is flowing in. BEWARE. TURKEY'S MONETARY POLICY REMAINS TOO LOOSE. https://t.co/ubNTzVl6KH
