Last week we saw the S&P500 barely move. There was a gain of exactly 1 point on the week. The range on the week was just about 1%. It has been rare that we have seen such tight ranges in the last year.
The 10 years treasury traded in a range of 1.56% to 1.69%, but couldn’t get over the 1.70% hurdle and closed the week at 1.63%. We will await more data on inflation to see where this goes–certainly there is plenty of anecdotal evidence the prices are exploding. Of course on Friday we have employment numbers for April.
The Fed balance sheet dropped by $40 billion. This continues the normal trend of up 2-3 weeks and then down a week. This is the one piece of data that we all can correctly forecast–it will be increasing forever.
The average $25/share preferred stock and baby bond FELL last week by 9 cents. Investment grade fell by 20 cents, CEF preferreds fell by 9 cents, mREITs fell by 4 cents with shipping issues off 13 cents.
Last week we had 5 new income issues announced. Only 4 of the 5 actually priced and we await pricing on Aberdeen Income Credit Strategies new preferred. Also Priority Income Fund (not traded publicly) registered a new issue of term preferred shares–but with their history we may not see this issue sold for weeks or months.
REIT Lument Finance Trust (LFT) price a new preferred at 6.50%. No trading has taken place as far as I know in this new issue. No OTC ticker has been announced.
Regions Financial (RF) priced a new non-cumulative preferred with a coupon of 4.45%. The issue is trading on the OTC under ticker RFPEL and closed last week at $24.70.
First Horizon (FHN) priced a new non-cumulative preferred with a coupon of 4.70%. The issue is trading under OTC ticker FHNNP and closed last week at $24.95.
Lastly Capital One Financial (COF) priced a new non cumulative preferred with a coupon of 4.375%. The issue is trading under OTC ticker COFPL and closed last Friday at $24.61.
