Fixed Income Weekly: Flight to Quality Continues to Favour IG Bonds
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Chief Investment Office1 Jun 2023
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FOCUS OF THE WEEK

USD Rates: UST selloff finally abates. The relentless selloff in US Treasuries finally cooled. We thought that the rise in yields looked extremely overstretched by last Friday's close as the market factored in increasing optimism on the debt ceiling and turned more worried about a hawkish Fed. That has played out overnight with 2Y yields and 10Y yields dipping to 4.45% and 3.68% respectively. There are no clear triggers for the rally. Some of it could be due to month end rebalancing, profit taking from Treasury shorts or jitters as the debt ceiling vote looms. On the latter, there is still some time to go before Treasury Secretary Yellen's latest X-date guidance on 5 June. At current levels, we think that yields are more fairly valued.

Meanwhile, the curve (2Y/10Y) has further inverted as a more hawkish Fed get priced. We see -80 bps as the first indication that Fed hawkishness in the market might get overdone. Note that during the episode in early March (before the bank failures), this segment of the curve did invert even further but it was brief. We think deeper inversions from here would offer good risk/reward for steepening.

Credit spread movements. Credit spreads saw weekly tightening across most major bond indices, apart from slight widening in Europe HY.

Changes in Spreads


Source: Bloomberg, DBS

 

MARKET ACTIVITY & PIPELINE OBSERVATIONS

Asia ex-Japan USD Primary Market

Asia ex-Japan USD primary market activity remained constructive in the week ending 26 May, with a total of USD2.0b printed across three transactions. The headline transaction of the week came from Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad’s USD1.5b transaction which comprised a 5-year USD750m Sukuk and 10-year USD750m conventional bond. This marked Khazanah’s first-ever rated USD offering, as well as the first Malaysian issuer to tap the public USD market this year. This rare transaction was welcomed by investors and saw strong book momentum, with participation from high quality accounts across regions. Strong demand from investors was evident in the high book oversubscription ratio for both tranches – c.6.5x and 7.9x oversubscribed for the 5Y Sukuk and 10Y conventional tranche respectively.

Secondary Markets

It was another constructive week in the Asian credit market with volumes back up albeit HK’s public holiday on Friday. Good demand continued to be seen in the HK space with better buying flows in long dated bonds such as HKINTL53 and HKAA53. The new CKHH 28 and 33 continue to trade well before profit-taking flows kicked in. In the Chinese SOE space, Syngenta’s news on its IPO plan continued to lift the HAOHUA curve. HAOHUA30 was 5-6bp tighter and was lifted +188 at the tights, and we also saw some CHGRID27 trading at +59 to 60. The China TMT space saw good momentum from last week’s set of earning releases. BABA31 traded to tights of +128 and TENCNT30 to +145 to end the week. Higher beta tech names were also active, with LENOVO30 trading at +270 and MEITUA30 trading at +287 level.

Chinese financials were mixed – Buyers were seen in new issues such as BOCAVI28 and 33. The new CCB26 saw good demand from real money accounts and slight selling from fast money, with spreads tightening c.2-3 bps upon its first day of trading. Bank AT1s saw some selling from bank accounts and several names were 15 to 20c lower.

SGD credit market started the week firm with healthy activity from both institutional and retail accounts. Good activity was seen in retail accounts, across financials to senior and corporate perpetuals. Profit-taking flows were observed from institutional accounts. The new Thomson Medical 5NC1 saw light flows, with small buying interest from retail accounts topping up their allocations in the morning, while profit takers cashed out in the afternoon session to close around 100.25. In the second half of the week, higher rates post the T-bills auction brought out sellers from institutional accounts, while retail activities tapered off slightly.

 

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Note: All views expressed are current as at the stated date of publication

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