PrefBlog

Deflation fears?

Wholesale prices in the U.S. fell in October for a second month, reflecting cheaper energy costs.

The 0.2 percent drop in the producer-price index followed a 0.1 percent decline the prior month, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. The decrease matched the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 75 economists. The so-called core measure, which excludes food and energy, increased 0.2 percent as the cost of cars jumped by the most in four years.

Server fiddling continues. PrefInfo.com has been moved to the new server and works fine! PrefShares.com has also been moved; the DNS change should be propogated across the Internet by 6pm Friday 22.

It was a mixed day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualDiscounts up 24bp, FixedResets gaining 3bp and DeemedRetractibles off 3bp. BAM issues were conspicuous in the Performance Highlights, with Floaters down and PerpetualDiscounts up. Volume was well above average.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.57%, equivalent to 7.24% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Long corporates now yield about 4.8%, so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread (in this context, the “Seniority Spread”) is now about 245bp, a slight (and perhaps spurious) decline from the 250bp reported November 6.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 21st, 2013 at 11:35 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.