Bloomberg Surveillance · Tuesday, September 15, 2026
Sinjin Bowen of Beach Point Capital noted that high-yield bonds and leveraged loans have shown positive returns year-to-date, outperforming the broader US aggregate corporate bond market. He attributed this to high-yield's lower interest rate sensitivity and the strong fundamentals of issuers, though he cautioned about potential asymmetric downside if companies face operational missteps.
“U.S. Corporate high yield, positive 1.8% this year to date. Leverage loans, which is where I used to play back in the day, actually up 3.4%.”
“So high yield has lower interest rate sensitivity than the ag does. And floating rate, it continues to outperform in mostly simply because of interest rates, but also the issuer base itself hasn't had the same, there are different degrees of exposures to both cyclical functions coming out of the inflationary pressures from the macro down, as well as the AI trade on both sides of it.”
“It is good, especially for the issuer base, which are still exhibiting really strong fundamentals. It doesn't bode well if a company does have an operational misstep. The asymmetric downside can be extreme in price action.”