Category Archives: pik bonds

exit fees for junk bond funds?

June 17, 2014 By in bond market, ETFs Vs. Mutual Funds, Industry Analysis, Investment firms, junk bonds, pik bonds, securities markets Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

contingency planning

The SEC is doing contingency planning for the time when the Fed will declare the current five-year+ economic emergency over and begin to raise interest rates back to normal.  What “normal” is in today’s world is itself a subject of debate .  The official Fed view is that overnight money should carry an annual interest charge of 4% vs. the current zero.  Even if the right number is actually 3%, that’s still a huge jump (more on this topic in a couple of days).

According to the Financial Times, the SEC is worried about what will happen to junk bond funds/ETFs when rates begin to rise.

the problem

The issue is this:

–investors wary of the stock market but searching for yield have put $1 trillion into corporate bond funds since the financial crisis.  Such funds now have about $10 trillion in assets under management.

–the charm of mutual funds is that the holder is entitled to cash in any/all of his shares at any time before the market close on a given day, and cash out at that day’s net asset value.

–junk bonds are relatively sensitive to changes in interest rates and go down when rates go up, and

–many junk bonds trade “by appointment only,” meaning they’re very illiquid and basically don’t trade.

So, the question arises, what happens if/when holders see their net asset value eroding and decide to all withdraw at once?  Arguably buyers will disappear when they see an avalanche of selling coming toward them.  The initial selling itself will tend to put downward pressure on bond prices.  A falling NAV can conceivably generate even more, panicky, selling.

If a big no-load junk bond fund is hit with redemptions equal to, say, 25% of its assets over a period of several months, will it be able to sell enough of its portfolio to meet shareholders demands for their cash back?  Maybe   …maybe not.

operates like a bank…

Put a different way, a junk bond fund is a lot like a bank.  It takes in money from depositors and lends to corporations.  In the pre=-junk bond days, a bank would lend at, say, 10%, pay depositors 2% and keep the rest for itself.  That opened the door to junk bond funds, which reverse the revenue split, keeping a little for themselves and paying the lion’s share of the interest income to shareholders.

…but no FDIC or Fed

If there’s a run on a bank, the government steps in and stands behind deposits.  If there’s a run on a mutual fund, there’s only the fund management company.

a real problem?

How likely is any of this to happen?  I have no idea.  Neither does the SEC   …but it’s apparently thinking it doesn’t want to find out.

Allowing/requiring junk bonds to charge exit fees would do two things:  it would decrease the flow of new money into the funds from the instant the fees were announced–and maybe trigger redemptions in advance of the imposition date; and it would make holders think twice before taking their money out.

footnote-ish stuff

Historically, there’s a sharp difference between the behavior of holder of load and no-load funds.  In experience, load funds that I’ve run have experienced redemptions of maybe 5% of assets in bad times.  Similar no-load funds might lose a third of their assets.

Mutual funds typically have tools they can use to deal with high redemptions.  They can usually buy derivatives that will hedge their portfolio exposure; they have credit lines they can use to get cash for redemptions immediately; in dire circumstances, they can suspend redemptions or meet redemptions in kind (meaning you get a junk bond instead of your money ( ugh!)).

Junk bond ETFs are a tiny portion of the whole.  They’re a special type of mutual fund.   Holders of ETF shares don’t deal directly with the management company.  They buy and sell through designated market makers, who have no obligation to transact at or near NAV.  Therefore, they can staunch selling simply by swinging the market down far enough.  At the bottom of the stock market in March 2009, for example, I can recall specialized stock ETFs trading at over 10% below NAV!

This issue is part of a larger government debate about whether large investment management companies are systematically important to the financial system and, as such, should be more highly regulated.

 

 

fixed income speculation and tapering

February 13, 2014 By in bond market, contingent convertibles, Current Market Thoughts, junk bonds, pik bonds Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

One of the earliest attempts by technical analysts in the US to link their work to economic variables was in charting the relationship between growth in the domestic money supply and stock market advance.

This wasn’t Milton Friedman.

This was–and is–a common sense attempt to create a barometer to measure the degree of speculation inherent in the stock market.  The idea is that the economy needs a certain amount of money to grease the wheels of commerce–to keep factories humming, meet payrolls, build inventories.  Anything in excess of that amount will inevitably find its way into financial speculation in equities, real estate and commodities.  Speculation, in turn, will lead to intervention by the Fed , “to take away the punch bowl,” as William M. Martin, a former Fed Chairman put it.  (Or, in the most recent case, where the punch bowl was heavily spiked and stayed out forever, a near-meltdown of the world financial system.)  So it’s an early warning indicator of a market decline.

Although still used by at least one famous hedge fund, this simple rule has lost much of its usefulness in a globalized world with supply chain management systems, ubiquitous, but only semi-visible derivative contracts and the increased prominence of businesses based on intellectual property.

I think, however, that the Fed is using this rule, but has reversed the inference, as part of its rationale for tapering.  I think the Fed sees increasing speculative activity in fixed income markets as evidence that there’s too much money sloshing around in the world.  (I know I am.)

Three areas worry me:

—pik bonds.    Pik stands for payment-in-kind.  It’s a type of junk bond where the issuer has shaky cash flows and may not be able to afford to make interest payments on its debt.  So lenders allow the firm to pay interest “in kind,” meaning issuing more junk bonds to cover the interest expense.  As is always the case in investment banking, there are variations on the theme:  the bond may be pik from inception; the issuer may have the right to convert the bonds from cash to pik, if he needs to; or the issuer may be able to “toggle” back and forth between cash and pik as he desires.

In my limited junk bond experience, pik bonds only rear their heads at bond market peaks.  And they’re here again.

—contingent convertibles, or “cocos.’   The original cocos, spawned by the financial crisis, are bonds issued by financial companies that can be forcibly converted into equity–thus shoring up regulatory capital–if the issuer gets into financial trouble.  In my view, the buyer is exposed to all the downside of owning an equity with few of the rewards.

According to the Financial Times, a new variation on the coco theme has recently appeared.  The new securities are called “sudden death” or “wipeout” bonds.   Their attraction is that they pay coupons of around 8%.  The catch is that if the issuer’s regulatory capital falls below a ratio specified in the bond indenture–so far its been if a bank’s Tier One equity ratio falls below 7%–then coco holders lose all their money.  

To me, this looks like an equity put dressing it up in bond clothing so fixed income managers can buy it.

—the Fragile Five.  2014 opened to a bout of bondholder angst about their positions in the debt of places like Argentina.  Argentina?   Really?  Isn’t this the same place that nationalized Repsol in 2012?   …the same place that defaulted on its sovereign debt in 2001?   …where capital flight has accelerated to the point that the government has shut down online shopping to prevent money from leaving the country?  Talk about risky.

I think these areas worry the Fed, too.  They’re why I think we’d have to see considerable economic weakness in the US before tapering comes to a halt.