By Kate Duguid and Megan Davies
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Prices on U.S. high-yield exchange-traded funds tracking the junk bond market, and stocks and bonds of “fallen angel” companies such as Ford Motor Co , soared on Thursday after the Federal Reserve announced it would expand its corporate bond-buying program to include some speculative-grade debt.
The central bank has pledged a “whatever-it-takes” approach to keep credit flowing to businesses and households and Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Thursday the bank would continue to use all the tools at its disposal until the U.S. economy begins to fully rebound. The United States has the world’s highest number of confirmed cases of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.
“Credit tends to lead equities and the announcement today gave the credit markets an adrenaline shot. It can’t stop companies from defaulting, but at least this helps high yield companies manage borrowing costs while they fight to stay in business,” said Matthew Miskin, co-chief investment strategist at John Hancock Investment Management.
The Fed’s broad $2.3 trillion package includes a primary market facility that specifies that companies recently downgraded from investment grade to the first tier of junk – so-called fallen angels – will be eligible for the program. That includes companies like Ford, which saw its bond prices rally and its stock jump 11.5%. Occidental Petroleum , another recent fallen angel, also saw bond and share prices rally, with the latter up nearly 15%.
The Fed’s secondary market facility will buy eligible high-yield exchange-traded funds, which sent prices of the iShares iBoxx High Yield Corporate Bond Fund and the SPDR Bloomberg Barclays High Yield Bond ETF both up more than 6%.
The primary facility can purchase corporate bonds that have a maturity of four years or less of companies that have been rated at least BBB-/Baa3 as of March 22, or if it were subsequently downgraded, at least BB-/Ba3 at the time the facility makes a purchase, the Fed said.
Its secondary facility can buy bonds of companies that have a maturity of five years or less and are rated at least BBB-/Baa3 as of March 22, or if downgraded, must be at least BB-/Ba3.
(Reporting by Kate Duguid, additional reporting by Megan Davies; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Tom Brown)
