Wow–the softening job openings report has really hammered interest rates lower – the 10 year Treasury now off by 11 basis points.
Obviously the folks trading bonds are are thinking like I have been thinking–it’s all about jobs, jobs, jobs.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover report just came out this morning and job openings fell to the lowest level since March, 2021. Job openings are still plentiful with 1.34 jobs available for each unemployed person out there–just the same it is all about the direction and the direction is softening.
No doubt that the FOMC will leave rates unchanged next week.
Why do I have this sneaking suspicion in back of my head that rates will surge higher again before they really fall back??? Always the skeptic, I guess.
I don’t expect them to rise but when they hold steady for awhile that will confound all the people wishing for a cut.
Higher income jobs under threat. Always the lower income ones that are plentiful which doesn’t mean much if you’re coming from upper or middle class perspective.
Eventually, this impacts overall consumer spend on discretionary.
I’m not of the opinion USA is heading towards a soft landing but everyone is entitled to their opinion.
… and yet, surprisingly, the low vol CNPWP slipped for just a moment, triggering a partial fill of 50 shares for a nice message from the universe that “one person’s errant market sell is another’s longstanding limit buy”.
Now, if the rest would fill at my Mr. Scrooge bid ($32 / 6.375%), that’d be a christmas miracle!
I think the current prices without lower stinky bids are still pretty good for many of these old school utility preferred if we see a couple hundred basis points of movement downwards at some point next year.
Agreed. And thanks for the reality check. I crossed the spread for an avg position of $32.30 / 6.32%.
I’m still relatively new to this, but what I don’t fully understand is why ute preferreds are typically rated BBB +/- when, in this case for example, they’re cumulative, qualified, and have been paying since 1949. Have there been ute defaults or something else in the past that I’m missing?
Josh – I think a simple answer to your question is that I don’t think any of the characteristics you point out, i.e. cumulative, qualified or maybe even past paying ability, has much of anything to do with how the rating agencies determine their present day future looking rating…. Give a look at https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/bond-rating.asp to get a starting point view .