The anticipation of rate cuts to come this year is making for a busy bond month to start 2024. Now, regional banks are adding to corporate bond sales, according to data from Bank of America. Per the Reuters report, January “has already seen $151 billion in new IG corporate bond supply,” based on data from BMO Capital Markets.
Thus far, every week in the new year has already exceeded supply expectations. So higher issuance confirms the optimism that rate cuts are ahead. If that’s the case, corporate bond investors may want to lock in higher yields now before cuts eventually arrive.
“Despite the torrid pace of supply this year, demand remains exceptionally strong with January seeing the lowest new issue concessions for any month since 2021,” Krieter said. He added that even high-risk bonds are seeing greater demand as “evidence of the insatiable appetite for risk.”
As opposed to getting individual corporate bond exposure, another option investors can choose is an ETF that can provide all-encompassing exposure.
A Fund of Funds Solution
One option is a fund of funds solution. This is available in the Vanguard Total Corporate Bond ETF ETF Shares (VTC), which seeks to track the performance of a broad, market-weighted corporate bond index.
Additionally, VTC is a employs an indexing investment approach designed to follow the performance of the Bloomberg U.S. Corporate Bond Index, which measures the investment-grade, fixed-rate, taxable corporate bond market. The index includes U.S. dollar-denominated securities publicly issued by industrial, utility, and financial issuers. The fund comes with a low expense ratio of 0.04%. As of January 19, it has a 30-day SEC yield of 3.83%.
