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Monday Morning Kickoff

Opening the week at 3142 the S&P500 moved lower to 3126 on Tuesday before moving higher to close the week at around 3169–short of a 52 week high in the 3183 area.

The 10 year treasury opened the week around 1.83% and drifted plus and minus a few basis points before taking a run all the way to 1.92% on Wednesday based on never ending Chinese trade rumors. Rates then drifted lower as the trade ‘deal’ turned in to not much at all–closing the week at 1.82%. We shall see the veracity of Chinese ‘deal ‘ claims this coming week – I would not be surprised to see rates drift through the week.

The FED balance sheet grew again last week–this time by $30 billion for a 3 week total of $65 billion–this non-QE, quantative easing is really quite the joke as FED explanations make little sense and as some on the site have posited–Who is in trouble? Is it the German derivative king Deutsch Bank (DB)? Or is the FED simply monetizing the massive debt of the U.S. Government? Sooner or later we will find out what the hell is up–but for now ‘party on’ -ignorance is bliss.

Last week we had a number of new issues priced.

Insurer WR Berkley (WRB) priced a new baby bond. The issue is not trading as of yet.

Closed End Fund Gabelli Equity Fund (GAB) priced a new 5.00% perpetual preferred which is now trading under OTC ticker GBLQP and last traded at $25.26

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Self storage giant Public Storage (PSA) priced a new perpetual preferred issue with a coupon of 4.75% which is trading under temporary OTC ticker of PBSGZ. The issue last traded at $25.10.

Searchable Spreadsheet Now Available for Weekend Playing Around

Below you will find a link to a Google Sheet.

We have added cumulative/non cumulative as well as qualified/non-qualified to the sheet since we last gave you a peek at this sheet.

We are calling this sheet Version 12132019–obviously because that is todays date. There are 672 issues on the sheet and should include most all $25/share preferreds and baby bonds as well as some miscellaneous. There are some convertibles not here, nor illiquids as we can’t get reliable quotes on some of these issues.

TO USE THIS SHEET YOU NEED TO HAVE A GOOGLE ACCOUNT SO THAT WHEN YOU OPEN THE LINK BELOW IT WILL TRANSFER TO YOUR ACCOUNT.

YOU MUST THEN RENAME THE SHEET.

IF YOU DO NOT COPY AND RENAME YOU WILL BE USING THE MAIN MASTER SHEET. UNFORTUNATELY IF A BUNCH OF FOLKS DO THIS YOU WILL FIGHTING EACH OTHER (I.E. YOU DO A SORT–THEN SOMEONE ELSE DOES A DIFFERENT SORT–THEN A 3RD PERSON DOES ANOTHER–ALL AT THE SAME TIME–YOU WILL BE SEEING RESULTS OF OTHER FOLKS).

I am already working on the next VERSION, which I should have in a month. This means that a few new issues will be missing as I add a number of them every week (and I delete called issues).

Be aware that this spreadsheet has 3 separate sheets. I have ‘hidden’ 2 of them. The one showing is where you do the filtering parameters. If you want to make your own changes, after you copy the sheet, you can do so by going to View, Hidden Sheets, Alpha. The Alpha page is where you can make changes. I would strongly suggest not changing the sheet titled ‘list’.

If you try to make changes on the filter sheet it will break–just ‘undo’ to fix it.

Unless you are familiar with scripting etc and you fool around and break it bad–no problem, just come back and get a new copy.

Here is the sheet. Have fun.

Editing, Deleting Comments Now Live

Chad has got the new plugin for editing and deleting comments ‘live’ now.

When you make a comment you should see a box below your comment which will have a 5 minute countdown clock on it. You have 5 minutes to either edit–or delete your comment.

I have it currently set to 5 minutes, but will adjust as necessary–longer or shorter.

I will watch today and if anyone wants to comment–maybe it doesn’t work for them etc–let me know.

Watching REPOs By The Fed

As some of you may have read, or maybe I am the only one watching, the FED has announced giant sized REPO moves for the balance of the year.

I have been watching since September and the FED has done overnight repurchase agreements in the $50 to $75 billion area mostly–tossing in $15-$25 billion in 14 day repurchases agreements every 2 weeks.

Of course this is to provide liquidity to the banking system after a ‘blow out’ overnight lending rate spike of near 10% on September 15th.

Now we are 90 days later and the FED has announced they will be taking the the overnight operation to at least $150 billion. Yikes!!

I am of the thought now that this is all out on the table we will likely avert major issue—BUT there is a chance of a misstep–in particular in light of the fact that no one really seems to fully understand the market workings (certainly I don’t under stand it).

The point being is that we could see disruptions in the next 3 weeks–through the end of the year and no one should be surprised it something “breaks”.

The FED Statement of operations for the next month can be read here.

Colony Capital Redeems High Yield Preferreds

Giant REIT Colony Capital (CLNY) has redeemed 2 of their high yield perpetual preferreds.

A number of folks have discussed this a bit on the Reader Initiated Alerts page. Barbara posted this redemption at 7:16 this morning and other have chimed in.

The issues called (for Jan 10th) are the CLNY-E 8.75% issue and the CLNY-B 8.25% issue.

In addition to these issues there remains 4 outstanding perpetual preferreds that popped just a bit (1%) on the redemption news.

These 4 issues are all trading below $25 and have coupons ranging from 7.125% to 7.50%. Only the CLNY-G 7.50% is currently redeemable

Given the lack of yield in the market maybe some investors with a bit of risk appetite should look at these 4 issues?

Colony Capital has been a poorly run REIT and has been through trying times–their common stock trades at $4.xx, but recently they are coming under pressure to right the ship and with over $22 billion in assets (a total of $53 billion under management) you can be certain there is plenty of room for improvement. They have just sold a $5 billion portfolio of industrial properties to Blackstone so they are moving to get the house in order.

The 4 outstanding issues can be seen here.

This, of course, is not a recommendation, but a suggestion that maybe there is opportunity here for some investors.

Update–the company released an investor update yesterday which can be seen here.