Yesterday was a green day for common stocks, but the beatings continue for preferred stocks and baby bonds. I did not calculate the average loss for yesterday, but it was plenty big–certainly at least 1%.
You would expect to see the bankers get beaten up given the situation. On the other hand to see closed end fund preferreds getting pounded down is just silliness (I’m talking my book here of course). I own a modest position in GAMCO Natural Resources, Gold and Income Fund 5.2% preferred (GNT-A) A2 rated with an asset coverage of 461% as of 2/28/23. This issue fell $1.65 yesterday–on 3250 shares of volume. While these moves are frustrating the best way to handle this is to put in a good-til-cancelled BUY order which is exactly what I will do today. Current yield is now 5.9% and at 6% I’ll take some more.
Yesterday I was late entering my GTC buy order for the Tri-Continental preferred (TY-P) and shares dropped on selling before bouncing back up later in the day–I missed my buy but some on this site picked up some shares in the $47.29 area. Oh well my order remains in tact waiting on the next nervous nellie to sell to me.
So the FOMC meeting starts today and the incessant yakking about will they raise 25 basis points or will they pause is in full bloom on the business TV channels. Who the hell knows!! No one. We all have opinions but no one knows what they will do, but in the age of around the clock news I guess they have to fill the hours with blabbering.. I don’t watch CNBC or Fox News during market hours–I switch them on for an hour early in the morning–then off they go.
Futures are again strong this morning, but as we saw yesterday strong common stocks didn’t translate to income issues. We’ll have to see where things go–the income price movements are not correlated to interest rate moves now–so we will see where the nervous nellies take us.
I bought more ET.C today @$23.33. This might be called in May. If not, it resets nicely. I found it in the bath water on the floor (I hope that was water).
I see some DCP prefs are trading below par with Phillips taking over in June? I might get more if these fall further.
This sort of action has always proven to be an opportunity if you hold. The only losers during these times have been people who sell out due to fear. I remember bank preferreds trading around $5/share back in 2008. Similar price action occurred near the end of 2018 when income securities took a 20% haircut. The dip was quickly reversed and was gone 6 months later. And then of course there was Covid where many preferreds and baby bonds were cut in half but fully rebounded a few months later. This is no exception and will prove to be another great buying opportunity. The idiot bankers who were running SVB and SBNY are gone. These companies were ‘investing’ the capital they had assuming rates would never go up. The fact is that rates have been at these levels in the past and 99% of companies have planned accordingly. The worst thing you can do is sell and then 6 months later be forced to reinvest when securities are trading back around par. That would make me sick…
Chris–I agree generally. I own some of the Hennessy Advisors baby bonds and they moved down 2.36 at the open on a 1,000 share block sale to 19.80.
We see this ‘buy high sell low’ mentality each time there is an event.