Entries by halyard

Financial Times – 10/17/14

Michael Kastner, managing principal at Halyard Asset Management says: “There is a view that the Fed will lose its nerve given all the market volatility.” Central bankers had already forfeited markets’ full confidence before this week; now they are starting to be intimidated by them. Wild price swings are flashback to crisis

Financial Times – 10/16/14

“Margin is a concern and can certainly result in you being taken out of a trade,” says Michael Kastner, managing principal at Halyard Asset Management. But there are silver linings. One resides in companies’ hefty stock buy back programmes, says Mr Kastner. “I’m constructive on the share market as companies have a mandate to buy […]

September 2014 Monthly Commentary

September 2014 Bond investors turned cautious last month, reversing the upward trend in price witnessed for much of this year. As the Federal Reserve meeting concluded on September 17th, investors were hungry for clues as to when the FOMC would move to raise interest rates. Instead, the Fed further confused matters with the announcement that […]

Employment Growth on Sustainable Path

Below is a chart, we think you might find interesting.   We plot the total number of employees counted in the non-farm payroll survey (left scale 000s) and the number of Job openings (right scale, 000s) as tracked by the BLS’ JOLTs survey. Key observations: Number of Job openings has surpassed last previous peak Number of […]

LIBOR Continues to Misprice Fed Rate Hike Expectations

We put together a quick graph of short term interest rates and the market’s expectations of future rates.  The current LIBOR curve as measured by the LIBOR Futures market predicts rates to rise to between 1.09% and 1.95% from December 2015 to September 2016 (Charted as the blue shaded line below).  We then assumed that […]

August 2014 Monthly Commentary

The bond market staged a strong rally in the liquidity-starved month of August as professional traders and arbitrageurs squeezed shorts, pushing bond prices higher and the yield curve flatter.  The rally came despite continued economic strength and was accomplished in conjunction with a rally in equity prices.  Typically, bond and stock prices move in the […]

Financial Times – 9/18/14

“The demand for bonds has been so great in recent years that people have looked beyond the credit rating as they just want yield – any type of yield,” says Michael Kastner of Halyard Asset Management. Corporate bond ratings do not discern risk

A nice entry

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Mike Kastner on CNBC – 8/19/14

CNBC’s Jeff Cox, and Michael Kastner, Halyard Asset Management, discuss why retail investors are steering clear of junk bonds while institutional money is buying. One investor’s junk (bond) another’s treasure http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000303435

Financial Times – 8/11/14

Michael Kastner, principal at Halyard Asset Management, says relationships with banks “are not nearly as close as they once were” given the shifting regulatory backdrop. This has spurred Mr Kastner to hold “liquid” fixed-income securities – or those that can more easily be sold. He says he is steering clear of certain bonds, such as […]