Distressed-bond veteran Marty Fridson shares that you can reduce the risk of winding up on the wrong side of a trade by stepping back from the financial minutiae and the technical charts. Start by making certain the company is in a reasonably stable competitive environment.
Distressed-debt recommendations don’t rely on stories about immunity to recession that may turn out to be fairy tales. No. Instead the Distressed Investing team rolls up their sleeves, gets their hands dirty, and invokes a couple of more clichés that describe rigorous analysis of companies’ financial leverage, maturity schedules, liquidity sources, and cash flows.
Asymmetric information is something you must avoid falling prey to as an investor. There are laws protecting individual investors, but there are still ways to get caught on the wrong side of a transaction.
Perhaps the greatest of all the financial myths out there is that investing in U.S. Treasuries is a risk-free endeavor… The truth is that a U.S. Treasury security with a 10-year maturity is anything but risk-free.
If the supply of distressed bonds increases, the prices of distressed bonds will likely decline. This suggests some bargains will become available for discerning, patient investors. We’ll be carefully looking over the distressed merchandise to generate profitable recommendations.
Stocks dropped 10% over a four-week period in February and March. As is usually the case, the performance of bonds didn’t capture quite as many headlines. But their behavior as equities sank is worth examining – especially by investors who don’t know about the benefits of distressed bonds.
Tight credit isn’t the only factor driving the Distress Ratio’s rise and fall. But it’s a powerful one that’s likely to keep making it harder for struggling companies to refinance their maturing debt in coming months. It all adds up to a likelihood that distressed-debt investors will have a significantly wider array of bonds to choose from before very long.
This nutrition company was the focus of an epic battle of two investment titans. Since that dispute ended, shares have been up and down – now creating an opportunity to buy the company’s bond at a very large discount.
The total return of the average distressed bond exceeded 30% in 2024, beating the S&P 500 Index’s total return, which was well above its own historical average, at 25%. Still, with many big losers in that average, picking the right bonds is essential with distressed investing.
High-yield bonds often predict the direction of their companies’ associated stocks a few months in advance. We’ve taken advantage of this phenomenon with three bond recommendations followed by the same companies’ shares. And in this issue, we’re doing the same thing…