Bonds In Conversation : The End is Nigh, A Sign O’ Times ? NOT !
It is Murphy’s law at work that a person who hates doomsayers has turned into one.
I am not trying to spook, or frighten, or sensationalise things here. The Olam bond debacle is a small storm in the teacup for the local bond market which is unused to the odd crisis, yet I feel the duty to warn the market of the sign of times to come.
Browsing through the headlines and outlooks for 2013 in the past week has left me cold. For there is no comfort to be found in 2013, assuming we survive the Mayan apocalypse in the coming weeks.
NY Times quoted this on Twitter recently.
| Reasons to be worried: In 2008, it cost 800bp to buy protection against a Philippine default. In June, the price was 220bp. It is now 100bp. |
Morgan Stanley published the 2013 Asia credit outlook with the title of The End of A Great Credit Story.
WSJ
JP Morgan
| A turning point for global bond yields? JP Morgan reckons so. Wall Street Journal |
CME Group
| Is Corporate Debt the Next Asset Bubble? |
USA Today
| Money Watch: Bond funds too risky if rates rise? – USA TODAY |
I had lunch with a few old friends yesterday. Well-off bankers looking to park that retirement fund and enhance yields. Bonds look like that immediate solution, the same solution folks out there were looking for when they bought into Olam. The global baby boomer rush into bond funds breaking records again this year despite the lowest yields in history.
| Bond fund inflows crosses $400bn mark : Financial Times |
I voiced my concerns to them but ended up being peppered with questions like “What to buy ?” and “What currency to hold ?”.
I am still thinking of an answer.
Meanwhile, lets check out the activity this week. We saw Keppel Land do a 7Y USD bond issue at 3.259% on 4 Dec which tanked immediately after issue and is holding at 99 cents now. Oddly enough, the Keppel Land 12Y 3.9% 2024 rose in price which I am unable to verify.
Back to SGD bonds and I decided to do a table of bonds that could be affected by the Olam incident by just a casual 1 month price difference observation. Here goes.
Qualifier : Not suggesting that price changes are a direct result of Olam bond price contagion or that the prices in the table are accurate to market levels.
An striking similarity between all these papers is that these mostly appear to be the higher coupon, retail target papers, giving me the impression that we are seeing some small exits from retail accounts. The institutional players who are our regular bond funds, who have not bought much into Olam bonds this year, are perhaps less distressed, as with the hedge funds.
From the media reports which have made a celebrity of Michael Dee, I am going to assume that Olam is not out of the woods yet, which is something largely out of our control.
Thus, I am leaving you with the daily Olam price levels which are, I emphasise, not “live” prices. We can see that the prices have stabilised off their lows and just slightly lower today on the weekend uncertainty and the US Unemployment numbers tonight.
| OLAMSP 6 10/25/22 | SGD | 81 | 84 |
| OLAMSP 5 3/4 09/20/17 | USD | 86.5 | 88.5 |
| OLAMSP 2 1/2 09/06/13 | SGD | 95.5 | 97 |
| OLAMSP 5.8 07/17/19 | SGD | 84 | 87 |
| OLAMSP 7 09/29/49 | SGD | 79 | 82 |
| OLAMSP 6 08/10/18 | SGD | 86 | 89 |
| OLAMSP 3 02/25/13 | SGD | 98.5 | 100 |
| OLAMSP 7 1/2 08/12/20 | USD | 88 | 90 |
| OLAMSP 4.07 02/12/13 | SGD | 98.5 | 100 |
Have a great weekend.
Hi tradehaven, thank you so much for the very useful compilation and bond prices and sharing with us your knowledge and thoughts again. Thank you so much. I was wondering how much “lower” the Olam prices went today and how far are the Perp and 2022 now.
I was surprised why what Michael Dee said carried so much weight. He is just one of the ex directors. I was expecting Temasek’s present support which reflect a huge handful of people of his status to carry heavier weight but sadly it did not.
Olam is not out of the woods yet. I am wondering, would a slight adjustments in their strategy such as selling some assets or slowing down or a good Q1 report in Feb next year or selling shares bring them out of the woods? Meanwhile, I’ll pray for another white knight too.
Does anyone have the link to Michael Dee’s full article or something.
Sorry. Just updated the Olam prices. Not much lower and still higher than the lows we saw on 3-4 Dec.
Michael Dee’s article is on Business Times. You should be able to find it there if you are a subscriber.
Hi tradehaven,
Thank you so much for the updated Olam bond prices. Relieved to know things didnt really make a big turn for the worse. And more thanks for the info, I managed to grab hold of the article with Michael Dee’s ten suggestions to Olam in Business Times and I found an interview on some website too (cant remember if its from bloomberg). I am not sure whether the BT article or the interview came first but it seemed that he doesnt sound that very negative or hopeless about Olam after all, if I didnt misintepret what he said.
Have a fantastic week ahead!