July 29, 2011

Moody’s put Spain on Review-Negative:

Spain faces a possible downgrade by Moody’s Investors Service as its regions struggle to cut budget deficits and last week’s Greek bailout increases the risk that bondholders will have to pay for further European rescues.

Moody’s is reviewing the nation’s Aa2 classification, the ratings company said in a statement today. A cut would probably be “limited to one notch,” Moody’s said. The euro fell. Spain has the same credit rating as Italy, which is also on review for downgrade at Moody’s.

The trouble with regulators, as a class, is their inability to think things through. Increased transparency in the public bond market has brought with it reduction of choice for public investors, as more deals are done on a private placement basis, and thinner markets for the ones that remain, as capital gets redeployed to more profitable areas. Another example of this is hedge fund regulation:

There’s a two-word explanation for closing what was once one of the world’s biggest hedge funds and consistently one of the best-performing — with returns of about 30 percent annually in its first 30 years: Dodd-Frank. The law requires hedge funds to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission and provide information about customers, employees and assets. By returning outsiders’ money, Soros Fund Management escapes that rule and the loss of privacy that goes with it.

“An unfortunate consequence of these new circumstances is that we will no longer be able to manage assets for anyone other than a family client as defined under the regulations,” the brothers wrote in a letter to investors.

Or maybe regulators do think things through – a regulator’s ideal world is one in which everybody holds only plain-vanilla investments, nobody every complains and regulators are never subjected to criticism, informed or otherwise.

I would love to offer Malachite Aggressive Preferred Fund to the general public … but the process isn’t just expensive, it’s stupid expensive. To make such an idea work, I would have to convert my firm into just another marketting and distribution firm, with investment management tacked on as an unfortunate operating expense to be minimized.

There has been lots of noise about the City of Toronto cost-cutting programme … the problem as I see it is not so much that the City is doing things it doesn’t need to do (although there’s plenty of that) as it is that it grossly overpays for what it does. Take librarians, for example. CUPE BC claims that Toronto librarians make almost $35/hr – and that report was dated June, 2007! Add pension and benefits to that and I’ll bet there’s not much change from $100,000 annually. My girlfriend tells me that when she goes to the library and uses the scanner to check out books, there are generally three – count ’em, three – librarians watching her do it.

YLO closed the Trader Corp. deal yesterday, but it didn’t do them much good on the market as three of their four preferreds were down significantly on the day (bid/bid) – the exception was the short-term retractible, YLO.PR.A.

These issues did horribly on the month, occupying four of the bottom six positions on the total returns ranking of the HIMIPref™ universe: only YLD.PR.B (worst) and BBD.PR.D (fifth worst) managed to break the hegemony. Total returns for the YLO prefs ranged from -6.4% (YLO.PR.A) to -18.4% (YLO.PR.D).

The Canadian preferred share market closed the month on a mixed note,with PerpetualDiscounts down 2bp, FixedResets down 2bp and DeemedRetractibles gaining 7bp. Volatility was low. Volume was … pretty close to non-existent!

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.44%, equivalent to 7.07% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Long Corporates now yield about 5.1% (maybe a little under) (!) so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread is now about 200bp, a widening from the 185bp reported on July 27 as the two yields have moved in opposite directions over the past two days.

And that’s it for another month!

HIMIPref™ Preferred Indices
These values reflect the December 2008 revision of the HIMIPref™ Indices

Values are provisional and are finalized monthly
Index Mean
Current
Yield
(at bid)
Median
YTW
Median
Average
Trading
Value
Median
Mod Dur
(YTW)
Issues Day’s Perf. Index Value
Ratchet 0.00 % 0.00 % 0 0.00 0 -1.1669 % 2,420.8
FixedFloater 0.00 % 0.00 % 0 0.00 0 -1.1669 % 3,640.9
Floater 2.50 % 2.33 % 35,393 21.47 4 -1.1669 % 2,613.8
OpRet 4.85 % 2.31 % 55,997 0.17 9 -0.1322 % 2,454.5
SplitShare 5.24 % 2.15 % 52,341 0.57 6 0.0379 % 2,512.5
Interest-Bearing 0.00 % 0.00 % 0 0.00 0 -0.1322 % 2,244.4
Perpetual-Premium 5.67 % 4.89 % 130,516 0.81 13 0.0959 % 2,096.1
Perpetual-Discount 5.41 % 5.44 % 109,798 14.76 17 -0.0247 % 2,214.7
FixedReset 5.15 % 3.16 % 217,897 2.63 58 -0.0229 % 2,325.5
Deemed-Retractible 5.06 % 4.69 % 275,258 7.84 47 0.0745 % 2,179.1
Performance Highlights
Issue Index Change Notes
PWF.PR.A Floater -4.05 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2041-07-29
Maturity Price : 22.03
Evaluated at bid price : 22.26
Bid-YTW : 2.33 %
PWF.PR.E Perpetual-Discount -1.03 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2041-07-29
Maturity Price : 23.68
Evaluated at bid price : 24.89
Bid-YTW : 5.49 %
FTS.PR.G FixedReset 1.08 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2013-09-01
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 26.25
Bid-YTW : 3.19 %
IAG.PR.F Deemed-Retractible 1.15 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Hard Maturity
Maturity Date : 2022-01-31
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 26.30
Bid-YTW : 5.34 %
Volume Highlights
Issue Index Shares
Traded
Notes
IFC.PR.A FixedReset 31,562 Recent new issue.
YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Hard Maturity
Maturity Date : 2022-01-31
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 25.01
Bid-YTW : 4.09 %
BNS.PR.Y FixedReset 26,805 National crossed 25,000 at 25.34.
YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Hard Maturity
Maturity Date : 2022-01-31
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 25.17
Bid-YTW : 3.28 %
RY.PR.W Perpetual-Discount 23,420 YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2041-07-29
Maturity Price : 24.43
Evaluated at bid price : 24.75
Bid-YTW : 4.94 %
RY.PR.A Deemed-Retractible 20,811 YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Hard Maturity
Maturity Date : 2022-01-31
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 24.71
Bid-YTW : 4.58 %
MFC.PR.F FixedReset 19,524 YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Hard Maturity
Maturity Date : 2022-01-31
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 25.03
Bid-YTW : 3.88 %
TD.PR.G FixedReset 17,044 YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2014-04-30
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 27.19
Bid-YTW : 2.91 %
There were 11 other index-included issues trading in excess of 10,000 shares.
Wide Spread Highlights
Issue Index Quote Data and Yield Notes
PWF.PR.A Floater Quote: 22.26 – 23.24
Spot Rate : 0.9800
Average : 0.7181

YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2041-07-29
Maturity Price : 22.03
Evaluated at bid price : 22.26
Bid-YTW : 2.33 %

NEW.PR.C SplitShare Quote: 14.25 – 14.69
Spot Rate : 0.4400
Average : 0.2682

YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2012-06-26
Maturity Price : 13.70
Evaluated at bid price : 14.25
Bid-YTW : 2.15 %

CIU.PR.C FixedReset Quote: 25.01 – 25.81
Spot Rate : 0.8000
Average : 0.6451

YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2041-07-29
Maturity Price : 23.18
Evaluated at bid price : 25.01
Bid-YTW : 3.39 %

RY.PR.Y FixedReset Quote: 27.20 – 27.64
Spot Rate : 0.4400
Average : 0.2865

YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2014-11-24
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 27.20
Bid-YTW : 3.17 %

PWF.PR.E Perpetual-Discount Quote: 24.89 – 25.20
Spot Rate : 0.3100
Average : 0.1945

YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2041-07-29
Maturity Price : 23.68
Evaluated at bid price : 24.89
Bid-YTW : 5.49 %

FTS.PR.E OpRet Quote: 27.08 – 27.48
Spot Rate : 0.4000
Average : 0.2979

YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2013-06-01
Maturity Price : 25.75
Evaluated at bid price : 27.08
Bid-YTW : 2.31 %

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