The S&P500 continued to be a little weak last week falling by about 25 S&P points from the previous Friday–about 1/2%. While the index is seasonally weak it remains just 2% more or less from an all time high.
Interest rates which had been as low as 1.26% during the week ended up at 1.37% on the close Friday after being as high as 1.39% which we haven’t seen for a couple of months. Interest rate markets remain on edge as possibilities of the Federal Reserve announcing some near quantitative easing taper. With the Federal Reserve meeting starting on Tuesday and Fed Chair Powell having a presser on Wednesday afternoon anything can happen during this week in regards to interest rates–you know Powell is personally dovish, but he is no doubt going to be pressured to start some sort of tapering soon.
The Federal Reserve balance sheet had a relative explosive week of growth moving higher by $92 billion last week–the largest move higher in the last 2 months.
Once again $25/share preferreds and baby bonds were pretty quiet last week with the average shares moving higher by 4 cents. Investment grade issues were off 2 cents, bank preferreds were up 4 cents and shippers were up 6 cents.
We had 5 new income issues, all preferreds, priced last week. CAUTION–OTC tickers are changing on a regular basis
REIT Vornado Realty Trust (VNO) sold a new issue of 4.45% preferred which is trading under OTC grey market ticker VNOOV and closed last Friday at $24.99.
mREIT New Residential Investment (NRZ) sold a fixed-rate reset preferred with an initial coupon of 7%, which is fixed for the 1st 5 years. The issue is trading under OTC ticker NRZDP and closed last Friday at $24.88.
Non publicly traded REiT Modiv Inc sold a new issue of 7.375% fixed rate preferred which is trading under OTC ticker MOIVP and closed last Friday at $25.87.
Arizona based banker Western Alliance Bancorporation (WAL) sold a reset preferred with an initial coupon of 4.25% which traded up to $26.08 last week on the OTC market under tick WALPV>
Non publicly traded REIT INPOINT Commercial Real Estate sold a fixed rate preferreed which is trading under IPCRP, but quotes are not posted as it is restricted at this time and most of us can not trade this issue because of a lack of full financial information being filed with the SEC.
