High Yield Spotlight
40% Leverage, Asia-Pacific Bonds, A 15% Trailing Yield: Inside FAX
A 40-year-old CEF lending across Asia-Pacific at 40% leverage, marked at a wider-than-average discount.
Michael A. Gayed, CFA
CFA charterholder. Founder of Lead-Lag Media. Publisher of The Lead-Lag Report. 5x Dow & NAAIM Founders Award winner for research on intermarket signals.
Closing Thoughts
The Miss, the Message, and the Market That Refused
When the weakest jobs report of the year buys equities a rally and the bond market nothing at all, what exactly is the equity market rallying into?
Macro Observations
The Risk Did Not Leave the Market. It Changed Addresses.
The VIX sleeps at 15.31 while the 10-year climbed 104 basis points this year and TLT fell 11.1 percent. Volatility is not a number, it is a location, and in 2026 the location is duration.
Book Release
My Father’s Book, Reborn: The Third Edition Is Here
The third edition of my father’s Intermarket Analysis and Investing is here. Read my foreword, and find the paperback and Kindle editions.
High Yield Spotlight
7% High Yield Exposure For 0.05%: The Cheapest Tool In The Shed
SPHY's 7.10% SEC yield at a 2.89-year duration for five basis points is the honest baseline for junk income.
Macro Observations
29,000 Jobs. Stocks Up. Bonds Down. One of These Markets Is Wrong.
September payrolls missed by two thirds, July revised to negative 10,000, and stocks rallied while the 10-year still closed higher at 5.28 percent. Stocks and bonds disagreed about the same number.
High Yield Spotlight
QYLD Pays 12%. Its SEC Yield Is 0.02%. Here Is Why
The widest distribution-to-SEC-yield gap I have covered: what QYLD's option premium machine actually sells.
High Yield Spotlight
BlackRock's 12% Junk CEF Trades 12% Below NAV. The Discount Just Doubled
HYT pays 12% while its discount to NAV widened from -6.49% to -11.68%. Value entry or distribution warning.
Macro Observations
The Fed Is Not Fighting Inflation. It Is Fighting the Gas Pump.
Core CPI sits at 2.4 percent, essentially at target. The headline gap is gasoline, up 27.4 percent on the year and over a third of August's entire monthly increase. The Fed hiked into it anyway.
High Yield Spotlight
The Largest BDC In America Pays 10%. Its Book Value Just Ticked Down
ARCC's $29.5 billion book pays $0.48 a quarter, but core EPS is $0.47 and NAV slipped to $19.59.
Macro Observations
The Most Expensive Money of the Year Hides Inside the Cheapest Stocks
The 10-year climbed from 4.24 to 5.25 percent this year. Small caps already did the math: a -0.54 monthly correlation between rates and the Russell 2000, and an 11-point gap to the Nasdaq 100 since July.
Global View
Four Central Banks Went Four Ways This Month. Every Long End Went the Same Way.
The Fed, the ECB and the BoJ all hiked in September, the BoE held, and China eased. The 10-year ends of the US, Germany and Japan all climbed anyway. The risk being priced is fiscal, not monetary.