Fixed income purchase

As alluded to in my last quarterly report, I have been looking for some fixed income securities that have relatively short durations, marginability, and with a credit risk profile of next to nothing, yet maximizing yield.

Late last month I purchased a secured corporate bond. The debt is the only issue outstanding of the issuer and it was purchased at a mild discount to par. The underlying issuer obtained a credit rating for the debt and it is in the B’s. The issuer itself has a cash balance that is about 40% higher than the amount of debt outstanding. It is also profitable, generating cash flows, and has been doing so for quite some time. There is no good reason to believe that these cash flows will materially change between now and maturity. The debt is covenant restricted, only enabling the issuer to repurchase equity linked to the amount of income it produces. Not surprisingly, the company in question has been repurchasing their debt on the open market at a discount to par.

Yield to maturity that I received on my purchase: 10.0%.

I am not sure who was asleep at the switch as I did get the bonds at the bid, in a size that was sufficient to make me happy. Quite frankly I was surprised to see the trade executing.

The funny thing here is that the capital that I am required to lock up for the next few years (the maintenance margin is approximately 50%) will actually decrease my long-term performance figures, but in terms of the risk/reward ratio, this investment is a slam dunk. I am not aiming for the best returns, I am aiming for the best risk/return ratio.

Bombardier Bond Yield Curve Update

bbd-yields

Investors increasingly are finding the 2018 and 2019 debt maturities to be “easy money”, while the middle and long-range part of the debt curve are relatively untouched from a month and a half ago.

Preferred share yields today for floating rate preferreds (TSX: BBD.PR.B) is roughly 8%, while on the fixed-rate (TSX: BBD.PR.C and BBD.PR.D) they are roughly 9%. Yields have compressed over the last month and in the humblest of my opinions, have room to compress further.

Brexit – Impact

Market volatility has been high leading up to and including after the Brexit referendum results. The VIX has climbed up to around the 25 level which is above the average ambient temperature of 15, but not ridiculously high (last August, for example, there was a spike up to 50 and I’m struggling to remember what calamity was the order of that day).

The UK exiting from the EU causes uncertainty in the minds of money managers. Whenever uncertainty is high, the natural desire is to raise cash and reduce portfolio risk, so futures get sold. This triggers automatic liquidations of underlying equities and debt portfolios, which leads to broad-based asset price decreases as the liquidations occur. There also may be some margin liquidation going on for more over-leveraged players.

Eventually this vicious cycle ends – the trick is anticipating when the vicious cycle ends. I believe it will be sooner than later, although the choppyness of the market will continue to confuse most market participants into believing that we are either entering into the new dark ages, or a golden era of economic productivity when neither seems to be the case.

Canadian Preferred Share price appreciation nearly done

Preferred share spreads (in relation to government) have compressed significantly since last February and it appears that the macro side of the preferred share market has mostly normalized and accounted for the incredible drop of dividends on the 5-year rate reset shares due to the 5-year government bond rate plummeting (0.62% at present with short-term interest rate futures not projecting rate increases until at least 2018).

We are still seeing significant dividend decreases as rates continue to be reset.

I have looked at the universe of Canadian preferred shares (Scotiabank produces a relatively good automated screen) and further appreciation in capital is likely to be achieved through credit improvement (e.g. speculation that Bombardier will actually be able to generate cash indefinitely) concerns rather than overall compression in yields.

As such, one should most certainly not extrapolate the previous three months of performance into the future. Future returns are likely to primarily consist of yields as opposed to capital appreciation.

While investment in preferred shares, in most cases, is better than holding zero-yielding cash (in addition to dividends being tax-preferred), one can also speculate whether there will be some sort of credit crisis in the intermediate future that would cause yield spreads to widen again. If your financial crystal ball is able to give you such dates, you can continue picking up your quarterly dividends in front of the steamroller, but inevitably there will always be times where it is better to cash out and then re-invest when everything is trading at a (1%, 2%, 3%, etc.) higher yield.

I am also finding the same slim pickings in the Canadian debenture marketplace.

Valuations have turned into such that while I’m not rapidly hitting the sell button, I’m not adding anything either and will continue to collect cash yields until such a time one can re-deploy capital at a proper risk/reward ratio. If I do see continued compression on yields I will be much more prone to start raising significant fractions of cash again. Things are very different in 2016 compared to 2015 in this respect – in 2015 I averaged about 40% cash, while in 2016 I have deployed most of it.