
Financial markets defied the headlines in April. Despite the unresolved US-Iran war, continued disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, and oil prices pushing above $110 a barrel, risk assets staged a powerful rally. The S&P 500 returned 10.4%, its best month since November 2020, and closed at all-time highs. Small caps and the Russell 2000 jumped 15.3%, its best month since April 2020. Year-to-date, small caps have given investors a remarkable +13.21%, while the S&P is +5.70%.
In April, High Yield was higher by 1.70% and Loans were up 1.23%. Investment Grade credit returned 0.56%, while 10-year Treasuries declined -0.21%. Renewed inflation concerns helped push treasury rates higher. The 10-year rates increased 5bps during the month but oscillated between a low of 4.25% and a high of 4.43%. Fed funds expectations increased by a similar 4 bps for end of year expectations.
Three macro articles were particularly interesting. Each examined whether the post-WWII dollar-centric order has begun to lose its dominance. Simon White wrote a Bloomberg article titled "War Has Caused Lasting Damage to the Dollar System: Macroscope." Andrew Lees of MacroStrategy Partnership wrote "Pushing on a String – When Fiat No Longer Works". Lastly, Viktor Shvets on "Castles without Moats" in Bloomberg's Odd Lots newsletter.
Simon White highlights that valuation-adjusted dollar reserves have fallen below gold reserves for the first time in IMF reserve data. Following the 2022 freezing of Russian central bank assets, many central banks appear to have become more cautious in managing dollar reserves. Separately, the historic pattern of buying dollar weakness and selling strength has broken down, with recent declines failing to trigger meaningful reserve purchases. White suggests that the trade-recycling quid pro quo that funded the US cheaply in exchange for security guarantees can no longer be assumed, particularly as Middle Eastern exporters diversify domestically and as the US reliability as a security guarantor comes into question. Adjusted dollar reserves are down 15% from their 2014 peak. EM central bank physical gold holdings are up 15% in tons. White believes this shift is structural, not cyclical.

Andrew Lees digs into why the reserve status may be eroding. He highlights that the system it underwrites is structurally insolvent. US non-financial debt has grown $61.4 trillion since 2000 against only $21 trillion of nominal GDP. Net international investment position has collapsed from -$1.5 trillion to -$27.5 trillion. The treasury market now requires official intervention because the productive capital base needed to absorb it organically no longer exists. White's "puncture" is Lee's "pushing on a string." The seizure of Russian assets simply made explicit to foreign holders what the math already implied, marginal demand for Treasuries is no longer voluntary in the way the system requires.
Viktor Shvets ties these dynamics to portfolio construction. If the system must eventually clear, and the clearing is already underway in slow motion, then the Fujiwara Effect – the entanglement of fiscal, monetary, and geopolitical interventions – has degraded the cyclical machinery that mean-reversion framework depends on. The "weird" markets investors keep complaining about are not a sentiment problem. They are the price action of a system that no longer mean reverts because the mechanism that produced mean reversion – periodic clearing events that reset capital allocation – has been suppressed by policy. A market where winners take all and returns never broaden is the natural equilibrium of a regime in which cycles have been replaced by directed capital flows and disruptive thematic concentration.
Taken together, the three articles offer an uncomfortable but clarifying synthesis for investors. The conventional playbook of waiting for spreads to widen, multiples to compress, and cycles to turn before deploying capital is itself a bet on a regime that each author highlights may be gone. April's price action, with equities at all-time highs and oil above $100 a barrel, may not be an anomaly. It may instead be the macro regime Shvets describes and Lee diagnoses functioning as intended.
In this environment, a risk premium is being embedded into rate curves, causing heightened volatility. Meanwhile, corporate borrowers have been good stewards in aggregate and have not been the source of debt growth. Corporate debt to GDP has been declining since COVID and is flat to 2000 levels. Therefore, it should not be surprising that spreads on corporate debt remain "tight." Corporations in aggregate have been better creditors than sovereigns.

Duration carries heightened risk as directed capital flows intensify rate volatility. The 10-year treasury bond's standard deviation of daily price for the past five years has been 50 bps, compared to Investment Grade corporates with 38 bps and High Yield with 29 bps. This highlights that rates have been a source of volatility while credit has been a suppressor of overall volatility.
High Yield returned a strong +1.70% during the month, bringing year-to-date performance to +1.14%. Lower quality lead the way, with CCCs up +2.76% in the month, but still lagging year-to-date up +0.49%. BBs underperformed to benchmark, up +1.47%, due to more rate sensitivity. Year-to-date BBs are up +1.08%. Single-Bs posted a solid +1.81%, bringing their year-to-date performance to +1.43%. Industry returns were tight to the average, with Autos outperforming up +2.23%, and Cable bringing up the rear at +0.47%. Yields ended at 7.02%, down 4 2bps in April and higher by 44bps from the start of the year. Spreads ended the month at 302 bps, a decrease of 47 bps from the beginning of the month and higher by 6 bps from the start of the year. Flows helped returns, with +$5bn in April compared to -$10bn in outflows for the first quarter. HY posted the strongest month in net issuance since April 2020, with $27.4bn net issuance and $44bn gross issuance. Fundamentals remain strong, with high-yield companies beating expectations by a 2.5-to-1 margin.
Loans were up +1.23%, underperforming HY but outperforming duration assets. Single-Bs led Loans higher, with a gain of +1.32%, while BBs were up +1.00% and CCCs lagged +0.26%. Year-to-date, CCCs are underperforming, down -3.95%, while Single-Bs are up +0.90% and BBs are up +1.65%. We continue to remain underweight CCCs, which has paid off in terms of return and volatility in the past few years. Loan industries traded in a similarly tight band to high yield, with media outperforming at 2.11% and manufacturing lagging at 0.65%. Technology, the dominant story year-to-date, returned 0.68% but remained down 3.50% on the year. Loans ended April with a three-year yield of 8.56%, down 14bps in the month and up from 7.86% to start the year or 70bps higher. Three-year discount margins were 488bps, down 26bps in the month and 33bps higher than at the start of the year.
In late March, two Harvard professors, Mark Roe and Vasile Rotaru, published a paper titled "Liability Management's Limited Runway: Corporate Restructuring Today." The paper assess the current state of Liability Management Exercises or LMEs. The takeaway is that evidence shows equity owners and board of directors may face liability if they attempt to enhance their own optionality during stressed periods without materially solving excessive leverage. Their dataset of 89 coercive, non-pro-rata LMEs shows the bankruptcy-avoidance narrative does not hold up. Within one year, fewer than half of LME firms avoid both bankruptcy and re-default; within two years, only 22% avoid both. The three-year "success" rate is 7%. Prepackaged bankruptcies achieved with similar creditor support relapse far less often.
With non-pro-rata LME's, aggregate debt levels do not decline. Prepackaged bankruptcies reduce leverage by 57% compared to LMEs at 0%. Instead of debt-to-equity swaps, LMEs typically elevate large or favored creditors, leaving thin equity cushions and distorted incentives. Credit ratings stay essentially flat for two years post LME. Post LME bankruptcies, when they happen, last 2x-3x longer than non-LME prepacks because the engineered capital structure complexity and creditor infighting complicate the process. We hope that papers such as this will begin to influence corporate behavior. If boards pursue LMEs that are expected to be operationally useless but preserve sponsor option value, that could implicate fiduciary duties to maximize firm value, particularly once insolvency is established.
This is a meaningful point because Gheewalla (the 2007 Delaware Supreme Court decision) is what extends fiduciary duties to creditors when a company is actually insolvent, not merely in the "zone of insolvency." Once insolvency is established, creditors gain derivative standing to sue directors for breach of fiduciary duty. The Roe/Rotaru data, 7% three-year success rate, 0% median deleveraging, 71% three-year bankruptcy rate, is exactly the kind of empirical record that makes it harder for a board to argue an LME was a good-faith effort to preserve firm value rather than sponsor option value.
Source: Barrow Hanley. Returns represent an asset-weighted composite of all Bank Loan Fixed Income portfolios or High Yield Fixed Income portfolios. Index returns are shown before transaction costs, management fees, and other expenses. Performance is expressed in U.S. currency. Net-of-fee returns are calculated using a model fee. The model fee is based on a $100 million portfolio using our standard fee schedule. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Inception Date for Bank Loans is June 1, 2018. Inception Date for High Yield is January 1, 2005.
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Financial markets defied the headlines in April. Despite the unresolved US-Iran war, continued disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, and oil prices pushing above $110 a barrel, risk assets staged a powerful rally. The S&P 500 returned 10.4%, its best month since November 2020, and closed at all-time highs. Small caps and the Russell 2000 jumped 15.3%, its best month since April 2020. Year-to-date, small caps have given investors a remarkable +13.21%, while the S&P is +5.70%.
In April, High Yield was higher by 1.70% and Loans were up 1.23%. Investment Grade credit returned 0.56%, while 10-year Treasuries declined -0.21%. Renewed inflation concerns helped push treasury rates higher. The 10-year rates increased 5bps during the month but oscillated between a low of 4.25% and a high of 4.43%. Fed funds expectations increased by a similar 4 bps for end of year expectations.
Three macro articles were particularly interesting. Each examined whether the post-WWII dollar-centric order has begun to lose its dominance. Simon White wrote a Bloomberg article titled "War Has Caused Lasting Damage to the Dollar System: Macroscope." Andrew Lees of MacroStrategy Partnership wrote "Pushing on a String – When Fiat No Longer Works". Lastly, Viktor Shvets on "Castles without Moats" in Bloomberg's Odd Lots newsletter.
Simon White highlights that valuation-adjusted dollar reserves have fallen below gold reserves for the first time in IMF reserve data. Following the 2022 freezing of Russian central bank assets, many central banks appear to have become more cautious in managing dollar reserves. Separately, the historic pattern of buying dollar weakness and selling strength has broken down, with recent declines failing to trigger meaningful reserve purchases. White suggests that the trade-recycling quid pro quo that funded the US cheaply in exchange for security guarantees can no longer be assumed, particularly as Middle Eastern exporters diversify domestically and as the US reliability as a security guarantor comes into question. Adjusted dollar reserves are down 15% from their 2014 peak. EM central bank physical gold holdings are up 15% in tons. White believes this shift is structural, not cyclical.

Andrew Lees digs into why the reserve status may be eroding. He highlights that the system it underwrites is structurally insolvent. US non-financial debt has grown $61.4 trillion since 2000 against only $21 trillion of nominal GDP. Net international investment position has collapsed from -$1.5 trillion to -$27.5 trillion. The treasury market now requires official intervention because the productive capital base needed to absorb it organically no longer exists. White's "puncture" is Lee's "pushing on a string." The seizure of Russian assets simply made explicit to foreign holders what the math already implied, marginal demand for Treasuries is no longer voluntary in the way the system requires.
Viktor Shvets ties these dynamics to portfolio construction. If the system must eventually clear, and the clearing is already underway in slow motion, then the Fujiwara Effect – the entanglement of fiscal, monetary, and geopolitical interventions – has degraded the cyclical machinery that mean-reversion framework depends on. The "weird" markets investors keep complaining about are not a sentiment problem. They are the price action of a system that no longer mean reverts because the mechanism that produced mean reversion – periodic clearing events that reset capital allocation – has been suppressed by policy. A market where winners take all and returns never broaden is the natural equilibrium of a regime in which cycles have been replaced by directed capital flows and disruptive thematic concentration.
Taken together, the three articles offer an uncomfortable but clarifying synthesis for investors. The conventional playbook of waiting for spreads to widen, multiples to compress, and cycles to turn before deploying capital is itself a bet on a regime that each author highlights may be gone. April's price action, with equities at all-time highs and oil above $100 a barrel, may not be an anomaly. It may instead be the macro regime Shvets describes and Lee diagnoses functioning as intended.
In this environment, a risk premium is being embedded into rate curves, causing heightened volatility. Meanwhile, corporate borrowers have been good stewards in aggregate and have not been the source of debt growth. Corporate debt to GDP has been declining since COVID and is flat to 2000 levels. Therefore, it should not be surprising that spreads on corporate debt remain "tight." Corporations in aggregate have been better creditors than sovereigns.

Duration carries heightened risk as directed capital flows intensify rate volatility. The 10-year treasury bond's standard deviation of daily price for the past five years has been 50 bps, compared to Investment Grade corporates with 38 bps and High Yield with 29 bps. This highlights that rates have been a source of volatility while credit has been a suppressor of overall volatility.
High Yield returned a strong +1.70% during the month, bringing year-to-date performance to +1.14%. Lower quality lead the way, with CCCs up +2.76% in the month, but still lagging year-to-date up +0.49%. BBs underperformed to benchmark, up +1.47%, due to more rate sensitivity. Year-to-date BBs are up +1.08%. Single-Bs posted a solid +1.81%, bringing their year-to-date performance to +1.43%. Industry returns were tight to the average, with Autos outperforming up +2.23%, and Cable bringing up the rear at +0.47%. Yields ended at 7.02%, down 4 2bps in April and higher by 44bps from the start of the year. Spreads ended the month at 302 bps, a decrease of 47 bps from the beginning of the month and higher by 6 bps from the start of the year. Flows helped returns, with +$5bn in April compared to -$10bn in outflows for the first quarter. HY posted the strongest month in net issuance since April 2020, with $27.4bn net issuance and $44bn gross issuance. Fundamentals remain strong, with high-yield companies beating expectations by a 2.5-to-1 margin.
Loans were up +1.23%, underperforming HY but outperforming duration assets. Single-Bs led Loans higher, with a gain of +1.32%, while BBs were up +1.00% and CCCs lagged +0.26%. Year-to-date, CCCs are underperforming, down -3.95%, while Single-Bs are up +0.90% and BBs are up +1.65%. We continue to remain underweight CCCs, which has paid off in terms of return and volatility in the past few years. Loan industries traded in a similarly tight band to high yield, with media outperforming at 2.11% and manufacturing lagging at 0.65%. Technology, the dominant story year-to-date, returned 0.68% but remained down 3.50% on the year. Loans ended April with a three-year yield of 8.56%, down 14bps in the month and up from 7.86% to start the year or 70bps higher. Three-year discount margins were 488bps, down 26bps in the month and 33bps higher than at the start of the year.
In late March, two Harvard professors, Mark Roe and Vasile Rotaru, published a paper titled "Liability Management's Limited Runway: Corporate Restructuring Today." The paper assess the current state of Liability Management Exercises or LMEs. The takeaway is that evidence shows equity owners and board of directors may face liability if they attempt to enhance their own optionality during stressed periods without materially solving excessive leverage. Their dataset of 89 coercive, non-pro-rata LMEs shows the bankruptcy-avoidance narrative does not hold up. Within one year, fewer than half of LME firms avoid both bankruptcy and re-default; within two years, only 22% avoid both. The three-year "success" rate is 7%. Prepackaged bankruptcies achieved with similar creditor support relapse far less often.
With non-pro-rata LME's, aggregate debt levels do not decline. Prepackaged bankruptcies reduce leverage by 57% compared to LMEs at 0%. Instead of debt-to-equity swaps, LMEs typically elevate large or favored creditors, leaving thin equity cushions and distorted incentives. Credit ratings stay essentially flat for two years post LME. Post LME bankruptcies, when they happen, last 2x-3x longer than non-LME prepacks because the engineered capital structure complexity and creditor infighting complicate the process. We hope that papers such as this will begin to influence corporate behavior. If boards pursue LMEs that are expected to be operationally useless but preserve sponsor option value, that could implicate fiduciary duties to maximize firm value, particularly once insolvency is established.
This is a meaningful point because Gheewalla (the 2007 Delaware Supreme Court decision) is what extends fiduciary duties to creditors when a company is actually insolvent, not merely in the "zone of insolvency." Once insolvency is established, creditors gain derivative standing to sue directors for breach of fiduciary duty. The Roe/Rotaru data, 7% three-year success rate, 0% median deleveraging, 71% three-year bankruptcy rate, is exactly the kind of empirical record that makes it harder for a board to argue an LME was a good-faith effort to preserve firm value rather than sponsor option value.
Source: Barrow Hanley. Returns represent an asset-weighted composite of all Bank Loan Fixed Income portfolios or High Yield Fixed Income portfolios. Index returns are shown before transaction costs, management fees, and other expenses. Performance is expressed in U.S. currency. Net-of-fee returns are calculated using a model fee. The model fee is based on a $100 million portfolio using our standard fee schedule. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Inception Date for Bank Loans is June 1, 2018. Inception Date for High Yield is January 1, 2005.