Category: Market Action

You think you’ve had a bad time in the markets for the past year? Here’s a guy who’s had a bad time in the markets for the past year:

Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista lost more than a quarter of his net worth after the state development bank said he offered personal guarantees for 2.3 billion reais ($1 billion) in loans and a rout of his publicly traded companies deepened.

Batista is now worth $2.9 billion, down from $4.1 billion at the close of trading July 2, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The loans are part of the 10.4 billion reais that Batista’s companies contracted with the state-run lender, known as BNDES, since 2007. BNDES provided the tally of the loans and their respective guarantees in response to a request by Bloomberg under Brazil’s freedom of information law. The bank didn’t say how much is outstanding.

Batista’s fortune has plunged from a peak of $34.5 billion last year after he repeatedly failed to meet targets he had set for his startup companies. The latest disappointment came when his flagship OGX Petroleo & Gas Participacoes SA (OGXP3) said July 1 that it may shut down its only producing oil field, prompting a selloff that’s since erased $1 billion in market value from his six publicly traded units.
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The information provided by BNDES follows a July 1 report from Bank of America Corp. that estimated that the Rio de Janeiro-based lender was the most exposed of Brazil’s banks to Batista’s companies, having lent 4.9 billion reais, or 5.8 percent of the bank’s regulatory capital.

The best thing about bond ETFs is that they provide liquidity. The worst thing about them is that they provide liquidity:

Investors who sought exchange-traded funds as a faster way to trade corporate bonds are finding that they can be as expensive to trade as the underlying debt.

As trading in the three-biggest credit ETFs surged to unprecedented levels last month amid the market’s biggest losses since 2008, the funds’ shares dropped as much as 1.1 percentage points more than the net value of the less-traded securities they hold. The two largest high-yield bond ETFs have lost about 6 percent since reaching a five-year high May 8. That’s about 2 percentage points more than the loss for the Bank of America Merrill Lynch U.S. High Yield Index.

The gap reflects the extra charge investors paid for a speedier exit in a declining market by using ETFs that trade like stocks rather than buying and selling the less-liquid debt. Investors yanked about $1.83 billion of shares from the two-biggest junk ETFs last month, forcing sales of their holdings at a time when demand was evaporating.
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Shares of BlackRock Inc.’s $13.7 billion iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF, the biggest of its kind, plummeted 4.3 percent in the six days ended June 24, while the net value of its assets dropped 3 percent, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The fund’s share price fell to the lowest level in 12 months on June 24, to $89.04. The lowest value last month for the underlying assets was $89.66, the data show.

“The price reflects where you can exchange risk,” said Matt Tucker, head of iShares fixed-income strategy at BlackRock, the biggest ETF provider. “It’s the correct price. The reality is the majority of the high-yield market doesn’t trade every day.”

Nature abhors a vacuum:

Blackstone Group LP (BX), the private-equity firm that has spent $5 billion on more than 30,000 distressed houses, is preparing to expand its bet on the housing recovery by lending to other landlords.

The firm, which already owns more rental homes than any other investor, has set up B2R Finance LP to offer loans starting at $10 million, according to four people who reviewed the terms. B2R is reaching out to landlords with portfolios of properties seeking to grow in the burgeoning industry for single-family homes to rent, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

The world’s largest private-equity firm said last month that it was entering the later stages of its buying spree after leading a group of institutional investors who’ve spent at least $17 billion on more than 100,000 homes over two years, helping fuel the fastest price gains since 2006. By increasing its stake in the rebound through lending, New York-based Blackstone could benefit from smaller landlords already investing in what Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates to be a $2.8 trillion market.

Live by market-timing, die by market timing:

John Paulson, the billionaire hedge-fund manager seeking to rebound from losses tied to bullion, posted a 23 percent decline in his PFR Gold Fund last month, according to a letter to investors.

The drop brings losses in the strategy, formerly known as the Paulson Gold Fund, to 65 percent since the start of the year, the firm said in the July 3 letter, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News.

This report was delayed due to the incompetence of Toronto Hydro.

It was a day of modest recovery for the Canadian preferred share market; more modest than many recent days, but still a recovery! PerpetualDiscounts and DeemedRetractibles were both up 8bp, while FixedResets won 12bp. Volatility was more than one could generally expect on such a day; volume was average.

Nice article on pension derisking:

Such pension “derisking” approaches include lump-sum payouts to vested, terminated employees; liability-driven investment (LDI) strategies that match up plan assets with pension liabilities by moving from equities to long-term bonds; and the one currently making headlines — annuitization, the transfer of a sizable percentage of pension obligations to an insurance company for a paid premium. These tactics join more-traditional approaches, such as freezing and closing pension plans. Taken together, they constitute a sea change in pension-plan treatment.

A good US jobs number had the market in a tizzy:

Employment roared ahead in June, indicating the U.S. economy is poised for faster growth as it shakes off the impact of tax increases and budget cuts.

Payrolls rose by 195,000 workers for a second month, the Labor Department reported today in Washington, exceeding the 165,000 gain projected by economists in a Bloomberg survey. The jobless rate stayed at 7.6 percent, close to a four-year low.

Hourly earnings in the year ended in June advanced by the most since July 2011, giving Americans already buoyed by higher home prices more reason to boost household spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy. Stocks climbed, while the yield on 10-year Treasuries rose to the highest in almost two years on expectations the Federal Reserve will start trimming $85 billion in monthly bond purchases in September.

The Canadian preferred share market got knocked back, with PerpetualDiscounts losing 51bp, FixedResets off 20bp and DeemedRetractibles down 35bp. The Performance Highlights table was suitably dismal: very lengthy with only one winner; Brookfield issues led the way downwards. Interestingly, the Volume Highlights table is comprised entirely of Royal Bank issues, led by DeemedRetractibles; volume was above average.

There are rumours that European rates will continue low:

The European Central Bank will keep interest rates at record lows for an extended period and could yet cut them further, the bank’s chief, Mario Draghi, said on Thursday.

Less than two hours after the Bank of England gave a steer about future interest rate moves at Mark Carney’s debut policy meeting as governor, the ECB president adopted the same tactic.

“The Governing Council expects the key ECB rates to remain at present or lower levels for an extended period of time,” Draghi told a news conference after the ECB left interest rates at 0.5 per cent, emphasizing that this was the first time that the ECB had done so.

Mind you, European leadership demonstrated during the crisis that they were willing to compromise their personal integrity when this was considered expedient; as for the BoE, Lapdog Carney will do what he’s told and read whatever speech he’s handed. That’s why he was hired. And, I’m afraid, with Parakeet Poloz now in charge of the Bank of Canada, we’re left only with Bernanke as a trustworthy central banker.

There are more jolly bond fund statistics:

Investors have pulled about $60 billion from U.S. bond funds since Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke rattled markets by outlining his plan to end the central bank’s unprecedented asset purchases.
The redemptions foreshadow what’s in store for asset managers when the central bank eventually scales back the $85 billion in monthly purchases of bonds and mortgage securities that investors have come to rely on. Bond funds had $28.1 billion in net redemptions in the week ended June 26, the Washington-based Investment Company Institute said yesterday.

But to put that in perspective:

Overall bond redemptions were less than 2 per cent of total assets.

Here’s another object lesson in regulatory competence and honesty:

[Vincent] Tchenguiz has launched an unprecedented legal assault on the Serious Fraud Office, one of the top agencies for prosecuting white-collar crime in the U.K. After the SFO’s investigation of Tchenguiz’s dealings with an Icelandic bank fell apart last year, he accused the office of malicious prosecution and false imprisonment in a lawsuit filed in the High Court in London in December.

Tchenguiz, who was arrested on suspicion of fraud in 2011, is seeking damages of 200 million pounds ($313 million). And his younger brother, Robert, 52, who was also arrested, filed a similar suit, asking for 100 million pounds.

n July 2012, the High Court ruled that the SFO, under former director Richard Alderman, had misrepresented key facts in the case and directed the SFO to pay Vincent’s 3 million pound legal bill. The agency isn’t appealing the decision.
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The SFO also erred when it alleged Vincent had failed to inform Kaupthing that other banks had prior claims on his real estate; the loan agreement stated that fact more than 100 times.

The SFO’s key mistake was in taking on somebody with the resources to pay a £3-million legal bill. But the rest isn’t surprising.

DBRS confirmed RON.PR.A at Pfd-4(high) [Trend Negative]:

Same-store sales were flat in 2012, yet net sales increased approximately 1.7% to nearly $4.9 billion versus the previous year based on higher sales in the Commercial and Professional Market segment, new store openings, new dealer-owners and improved same-store distribution sales to affiliate dealers. EBITDA margins were negatively affected by weaker gross margins due to promotional activity in a highly competitive environment and higher selling, general and administrative costs. As such, EBITDA declined by approximately 40% to $171 million, marking the third consecutive year of declining EBITDA.

Balance-sheet debt increased notably in F2012 to approximately $328 million, which combined with weakness in operating income to result in further deterioration of credit metrics. Lease-adjusted debt-to-EBITDAR increased to approximately 3.77 times (x) in 2012 versus 2.54x in 2011 and 2.80x in 2010 (improvement in 2011 was primarily attributable to the early voluntary repurchase of debentures) and lease-adjusted EBIT coverage declined to 1.51x in 2012 versus 2.26x in 2011 and nearly 3.7x in 2010.

Going forward, DBRS believes meaningful recovery in Rona’s earnings profile will remain challenging as the Company is expected to continue to face intense competition and a highly promotional environment while Canadian consumers may remain prudent in the uncertain housing and interest rate environment. On June 27, 2013, the Company announced the next phase of its Transformational Plan, which includes the closure of 11 non-profitable stores in Ontario and British Columbia, as well as additional administrative headcount reduction and other cost-cutting initiatives. DBRS expects that a significant improvement in operating performance will be difficult to realize over the near term but EBITDA could benefit from the successful implementation of the Company’s Transformational Plan over the medium term.

Capstone Infrastructure, proud issuer of CSE.PR.A, is making an acquisition by share exchange:

Capstone Infrastructure Corporation (TSX: CSE; CSE.PR.A; CSE.DB.A – “Capstone”) and Renewable Energy Developers Inc. (formerly Sprott Power Corp.) (TSX: RDZ; RDZ.DB – “ReD”) have entered into a definitive agreement (the “Agreement”) whereby Capstone will acquire all the outstanding shares of ReD (the “Transaction”) by way of a share exchange, which will result in a larger infrastructure company with power generation facilities across Canada totalling approximately net 465 megawatts (“MW”) of installed capacity, an attractive pipeline of contracted development opportunities in Canada representing net 79 MW of capacity, and international investments in regulated water and district heating businesses. The Board of Directors of each company has unanimously approved the Transaction.

Under the terms of the Transaction, shareholders of ReD will receive 0.26 of a Capstone common share and $0.001 in cash, which, combined, is currently the equivalent of $1.01, for each common share of ReD. The consideration payable to ReD’s shareholders represents a premium of 10.8% based on the 20-day volume weighted average price (“VWAP”) of ReD’s common shares and Capstone’s common shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange (“TSX”) as at July 2, 2013 of $0.91 and $3.88, respectively. Upon completion of the Transaction, which is valued at approximately $70 million, existing Capstone shareholders and ReD shareholders will own approximately 80% and approximately 20% of the common shares of the combined company, respectively.
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• • Expands Capstone’s renewable power footprint in Canada by adding net 95 MW in operating wind power facilities in Nova Scotia and Ontario.
• • Enables Capstone to access a net 35 MW pipeline of wind power projects with 20-year power purchase agreements (“PPAs”) under development in Nova Scotia, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Quebec, and the option to acquire an additional net 44 MW in wind power projects with PPAs in Ontario. These projects will require equity funding from Capstone in the amount of approximately $60 million over the next two years, with the balance of the projects’ financing requirement to be satisfied with project-level debt.
• • Brings additional proven development and project management personnel with a record of completing renewable power projects on time and on budget.
• • Delivery of the development projects in ReD’s pipeline is expected to be accretive to cash flow over the long term.

Tomorrow’s report will be late, by which I mean Sunday.

It was another day of strong recovery for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts winning 56bp, FixedResets gaining 12bp and DeemedRetractibles up 19bp. The performance highlights table is comprised entirely of winners. Volume was on the low side of average, but not bad for a US holiday.

Europe’s back in the news:

A broad market selloff was triggered Wednesday morning by the crumbling of the centre-right government of Portuguese prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho, which has been rocked by the resignations of its finance and foreign ministers in the last two days.

The prospect of the outright collapse of his government has triggered a fresh political crisis in Portugal that is unnerving investors across the continent. The fear is that a political vacuum, followed by polls that could elect an anti-austerity government, or another shaky coalition government, would undermine the reforms and spending cuts agreed in 2011, when the European Union and the International Monetary Fund sponsored a €78-billion Portuguese bailout package.

Lisbon’s main market index, the PSI 20 was down about 5.5 per cent in early afternoon trading, European time though it had been down almost 7 per cent in the morning.
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The government of Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras last month lost one of its two coalition partners in protest of Mr. Samaras’s unilateral decision to shut the national broadcaster, ERT, eliminating almost 3,000 jobs.

In Italy, the government of prime minister Enrico Letta, in office since April, faces uncertainty because former prime minister Mario Monti is frustrated by the slow pace of economic reform and has threatened to withdraw his support.

There are some interesting changes coming in the US securities market:

U.S. securities regulators are set to vote next week to lift an 80-year-old rule that prohibits companies and private funds from advertising to raise capital outside of a public offering.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is required to remove the advertising ban under a 2012 law that sought to ease regulations on financing for startups and small businesses. In a nod to complaints from critics who say the change will open the door to more fraud, the SEC will also propose a separate rule during the July 10 meeting to add some investor protections and make it easier for the agency to monitor the change.
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A third rule scheduled for a vote the same day would block felons and others found culpable of securities-law violations from marketing such deals, which are more lightly regulated than public offers of stock or debt.

Gotta have that third rule! What’s the point of being a big-shot regulator if you can’t indulge in a little extra-judicial punishment every now and then?

David Parkinson of the Globe reminds us that the economy is still shaky:

The ISM’s index, which indicates the pace of service-sector activity in the U.S. economy, slipped to 52.2 for June, its lowest level in more than three years. While any reading above 50 still indicates growth, the index indicates that the pace of growth has been in steady decline; it has fallen in three of the past four months, after hitting a one-year high of 56.0 in February.

Yet the stock market has been somewhere between dismissive and contemptuous toward this erosion in the services ISM. The S&P 500 was up slightly in mid-afternoon trading Monday; over the course of the services ISM’s four-month slide, the S&P 500 is up almost 8 per cent.

OSFI has published Capital Disclosure requirements.

It was another very nice recovery day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts winning 40bp, FixedResets gaining 12bp and DeemedRetractibles up 24bp. There’s a very lengthy Performance Highlights table, but with no clear pattern to it. Volume was above average.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.39%, equivalent to 7.01% interest at the standard conversion factor of 1.3x. Long Corporates now yield about 4.6%, so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread is now about 240bp, down substantially from the 270bp reported June 26 but still above post-Crunch norms. Note that this week’s figure is not strictly comparable with last weeks figure due to the significant influx of former PerpetualPremiums into the PerpetualDiscount pool but, on a brighter note, is more comparable with older figures than has been the case recently.

Hands up who’s happy it’s not June!

Witness the record $61.7 billion of redemptions in U.S.-listed bond mutual funds and exchange-traded funds through June 24, according to TrimTabs Investment Research. That sum broke the previous monthly high of $41.8 billion, set in the scary days of October 2008.

“The unprecedented liquidation of bonds this month is a dramatic departure from recent trends,” David Santschi, chief executive officer of TrimTabs, said in a statement. “Before June, bond funds had posted inflows for 21 consecutive months.”

In May, Bill Gross’s Pimco Total Return Fund—the world’s largest—saw its first monthly withdrawals since 2011.
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Also whipsawing is the otherwise sleepy $3.7 trillion municipal bond market, where the largest exchange-traded fund tracking the sector had its best two days since 2008 after falling to the cheapest price in two years. The $3.4 billion iShares S&P National AMT-Free Municipal Bond Fund, known as MUB, sold at a record 2.86 percent discount to the value of its assets on June 21 after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the central bank may moderate purchases of federal and mortgage debt in 2013 and stop them around mid-2014.

The ratio of the yield of munis to those on Treasuries is about 115 percent, the highest since July 2012.

The factoids regarding US municipals is relevant to the Canadian preferred share market, since the motivation for owning them and the broad outlines of the investor base are similar.

OSC expenses are up 5.5% over last year, but revenue is up only a little more than inflation, at 2%. Some say this shows revenue isn’t growing fast enough.

Does this remind anyone of Toronto?

San Francisco’s median house price is poised to surpass $1 million this year after setting a record in May, the California Association of Realtors estimates. The county is the only one in the state with values to set a new high, said Leslie Appleton-Young, chief economist for the group. A limited supply of houses available for sale has allowed condo developers to step in and lure frustrated buyers such as Boortz.
Tishman Speyer Properties LP’s 655 luxury units in two towers south of the financial district, and the first phase of Lennar Corp. (LEN)’s Hunters Point project at a former naval shipyard with 480 studios and townhomes, are both scheduled to break ground today, according to the companies. The projects will add to 709 condos that were under way in the city at the end of May, according to Mark Co., a San Francisco-based firm specializing in condo marketing, the most since 2008.

Well – maybe this part is different:

Buyers have been making down payments of 35 percent in a market awash in wealth from tech workers and overseas investors, Mark said.

Still, SF’s condo boom is small potatoes by Toronto standards:

In March, active condo listings for sale on the MLS rose 8 per cent over last year to hit a record high for the month. At the same time, condo sales slumped 18 per cent. Compounding this growing supply-demand imbalance is the 55,000 new condo units currently under construction in the city, the majority of which are set to hit the market through the rest of the year and into 2014.

San Francisco has a population of only 800-odd thousand, but still!

Oh, boy! Nowadays an eager young kid can get a Bachelor of Boxtickingology!

York University’s business school has created a new specialty program to train business students to become financial regulators – or at least to work with them from within the banking industry.

The Schulich School of Business said Tuesday it has created a new 12-month specialty stream called regulatory affairs for financial institutions as part of its Masters of Finance program.

It was another day of solid recovery for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts (yes! They now outnumber PerpetualPremiums!) winning 36bp, FixedResets gaining 10bp and DeemedRetractibles up 18bp. The performance highlights table is suitably lengthy, markedly skewed towards winners. Volume was very low.

Nothing happened today.

It was another day of solid, if slowing, recovery for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualPremiums winning 22bp, FixedResets up 15bp and DeemedRetractibles gaining 5bp. There is another lengthy Performance Highlights table, which pales in comparison only to how long it has been in previous weeks. Volume was above average.

The Fed is trying to get the show back on the road:

Federal Reserve officials stepped up their campaign to stem an increase in long-term borrowing costs that threatens to blunt the U.S. expansion and sought to clarify comments by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke that sparked turmoil in global financial markets.

William C. Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said any decision to reduce the pace of asset purchases wouldn’t represent a withdrawal of stimulus, and that an increase in the Fed’s benchmark interest rate is “very likely to be a long way off.” He said bond purchases could be prolonged if economic performance fails to meet the Fed’s forecasts.
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[Atlanta Fed President Dennis] Lockhart, using a smoking metaphor, said the investors had misinterpreted the Chairman’s remarks. “It seems to me the Chairman said we’ll use the patch, and use it flexibly, and some in the markets reacted as if he said ‘cold turkey,” Lockhart said in a speech to the Kiwanis Club of Marietta in Georgia.

[Fed Governor Jerome ] Powell said and decision to reduce purchases would depend on economic data, and that there’s no set timetable.

“I want to emphasize the importance of data over date,” Powell said at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. “In all likelihood, the current” large-scale asset purchases “will continue for some time.”

There was continued recovery for the Canadian preferred share market today, with PerpetualPremiums up 30bp, FixedResets gaining 19bp and DeemedRetractibles winning 46bp. There was, naturally enough, another bumper harvest of Performance Highlights. Volume was average.

Who says Canada’s big financial institutions aren’t responsive and socially forward-looking? They have demonstrated yet again their concern about the financial comfort of the mentally deficient:

A group including Royal Bank of Canada and five other large investment firms is launching a competitor to the Toronto Stock Exchange, which handles the most trading in Canada.

The new market is designed to attract investors who are upset with what they see as unfair competition from high-frequency traders, who use ultrafast computers to exploit market quirks or to try to get ahead of other investors. The success of the new exchange may hinge on how much discontent there is with high-frequency trading (HFT) activity.
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The plan is the product of months of work by RBC and a group of supporters including mutual fund giants IGM Financial Inc. and CI Financial Corp., Canadian pension fund PSP Investments and international brokerages ITG and Barclays.

‘Boo-hoo-hoo!’ cry the traders, “Our lunch is being eaten by a mob of parvenu geeks who understand these complicated computer thingamajigs! Save us, save us!’

‘Certainly!’ answer the bosses. ‘We’ll open up a new exchange that makes competition illegal! That will boost profits and cover up our incompetence!’

‘Great idea!’ enthuse the regulators. ‘Just give us a little cut of the take and we’ll make the Competition Act … go away.’

Aequitas, naturally enough, claims its major purpose is to enable double-dipping on transaction fees paid by clients:

Our stakeholders are professional money managers, pension funds, institutional and retail brokers and Canadian issuers, who believe there should be a level playing field for all market participants. A new and different exchange that strikes the right balance between liquidity, price discovery and cost efficiency, and enhances markets for the long-term investor.

It was another day of impressive bounce-back for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualPremiums winning 66bp, FixedResets gaining 26bp and DeemedRetractibles up 65bp. The Performance Highlights table is suitably lengthy. Volume was very high.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.65%, equivalent to 7.34% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Long Corporates now yield 4.65%, so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread is now about 270bp, hugely elevated from post-Crunch norms and from the 235bp reported June 12.

In today’s news, a politician announced that insurance companies have lots of money so people should be encouraged to build on floodplains:

Insurance companies are between a rock and a hard place. The potential cost of overland flood insurance is enormous but, at the same time, Feltmate said companies are aware there are repercussions for the industry’s already dismal image in continuing to allow victims of devastating floods to “go apoplectic” when they discover they’re not covered.

Moreover, if the industry doesn’t deal with the issue itself, he said the government could impose a solution that is less palatable.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, the minister responsible for southern Alberta, strongly encouraged insurance companies on Monday to pay the claims of people whose homes were damaged by both backed up water and overland flooding, without being overly nit-picky about the exact cause of the damage.

Or, to put it another way:

The map of flood plain for 70-yr flood is shown in next page. Much of Downtown, Sunnyside, Bowness, and other residential areas are under water. This size of flood has not occurred since 1932, but it could occur anytime.

The City proposed management plans, but met with great disfavor by community group, who were worried that property values would decline if hazard zones were officially declared.

I grumbled about the closing quote on GWO.PR.I yesterday …. it turns out that most of the problem was the ridiculous TMX Close != Last issue. Some very expensive data purchased from the TMX has revealed that the closing quote was 21.75-21, 5×5 … a pretty wide spread, but not as nonsencical as the 21.01-22.21 last quote which, in their infinite wisdom, the TMX has decided to sell exclusively and is usually reported as the “closing” quote.

The imminent end of the world forecast by the Canadian preferred share market was postponed today, with PerpetualPremiums up 50bp, FixedResets gaining 34bp and DeemedRetractibles winning 101bp. These rather attractive index numbers masked a fair bit of chopping and changing, with there being a fair number of losers on the Performance Highlights list.

Nice quote from Richard Fisher of the Dallas Fed:

Investors shouldn’t overreact to the central bank’s plans to reduce the pace of asset purchases, Fisher said in an interview with the Financial Times published today on its web site. Investors behaved like “feral hogs” after the June 19 comments by Bernanke, he said, according to the newspaper.

Nothing moves as quickly as retail:

According to TrimTabs Investment Research, investors are selling bond-related investments at a record pace, with $47.2-billion (U.S.) flowing out of U.S. bond mutual funds and exchange-traded funds so far in June, easily exceeding the record of $41.8-billion set in October, 2008, during the financial panic.

Meanwhile, at the Canadian preferred share investor convention:

The Canadian preferred share market was left a shambles after a day of slaughter, with PerpetualPremiums losing 158bp, FixedResets off 78bp and DeemedRetractibles down 123bp. The Performance Highlights table is suitably ridiculous with … um … LOTS! That’s right, LOTS of entries … and a solitary winner. Volume was gargantuan.