The high-yield market traded with a heavy tone again this week as declining oil and commodity prices along with retail outflows continued to weigh on the asset class. Oil traded below $40 for the first time since August mid-week, while several other commodity prices are trading at multi year lows. The yield to worst and spread on the Bank of America High-Yield Index each widened 8bps over the week to close at 8.04% and +632bps. The index close the week wide of 8% for the first time since early October and has now retraced 62bps since hitting the recent low of 7.42% on 10/30. High yield performance decoupled from equities this week with high beta and commodity linked names leading the way lower. Year to date the asset class has now lost 2.15%.

High-yield mutual and exchange traded fund flows remained negative for the reporting week ending Nov 18 totaling $1.36 billion in outflows. This is the second consecutive large outflow from the asset class after last week’s $1.8 billion outflow, totaling $3.2 billion over the two week span and cutting into the $9.6 billion inflow from the previous five weeks. The full year reading now stands at a $1.5 billion inflow. Eight new deals priced this week for $4.63 billion in proceeds just surpassing last week’s total of $3.53 billion. For the second straight week no CCC deals priced as investors remain focused on higher quality names. All eight of this week’s deals closed Friday’s session trading above issue price. 28 deals for $21.105 billion have priced MTD. 374 deals for $242.7 billion have priced YTD.

The Bank of America Merrill Lynch High Yield Index monitors the performance of below investment grade U.S. dollar-denominated corporate bonds publicly issued in the U.S. domestic market.  Index data sourced from Bloomberg. BAML HY represents the index yield for the designated date, while return/change represent the index return for the period ending date. Yield referenced is the yield-to-worst and spread referenced is the spread-to-worst.