The Salomon Broad Investment Grade Index (known as the Salomon BIG or Citigroup BIG) is a common American Bond index, akin to the S&P 500 for stocks, originally owned by Salomon Brothers, run by its successor, Citigroup and now by FTSE Russel. The BIG is generally used for managing broad debt portfolios from short to long-dated maturities, similar to the Barclays Capital Aggregate Bond Index ("Agg") or the Merrill Lynch Domestic Master.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 18 megadiverse countries.
In finance, a bond is an instrument of indebtedness of the bond issuer to the holders. The most common types of bonds include municipal bonds and corporate bonds.
In economics and finance, an index is a statistical measure of changes in a representative group of individual data points. These data may be derived from any number of sources, including company performance, prices, productivity, and employment. Economic indices track economic health from different perspectives. Influential global financial indices such as the Global Dow, and the NASDAQ Composite track the performance of selected large and powerful companies in order to evaluate and predict economic trends. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 primarily track U.S. markets, though some legacy international companies are included. The consumer price index tracks the variation in prices for different consumer goods and services over time in a constant geographical location, and is integral to calculations used to adjust salaries, bond interest rates, and tax thresholds for inflation. The GDP Deflator Index, or real GDP, measures the level of prices of all new, domestically produced, final goods and services in an economy. Market performance indices include the labour market index/job index and proprietary stock market index investment instruments offered by brokerage houses.
The BIG includes treasuries, agency debt, corporates, non-corporate credit, mortgage-backed securities, and asset-backed securities (ABS). Unlike the Agg, it includes 144As, but unlike the Agg, it does not include municipals or commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS). Like the Agg, the BIG does not include any inflation-indexed bonds, and is limited to investment grade securities, including no high-yield debt or emerging market debt.
A United States Treasury security is an IOU from the US Government. It is a government debt instrument issued by the United States Department of the Treasury to finance government spending as an alternative to taxation. Treasury securities are often referred to simply as Treasuries. Since 2012 the management of government debt has been arranged by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, succeeding the Bureau of the Public Debt.
Agency debt also known as an Agency bond is a security, usually a bond, issued by a U.S. government-sponsored agency or federal budget agency. The offerings of these agencies are backed but not guaranteed by the US government. Some prominent issuers of these securities are Federal National Mortgage Association and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. Agency debt is also called an agency security.
A corporate bond is a bond issued by a corporation in order to raise financing for a variety of reasons such as to ongoing operations, M&A, or to expand business. The term is usually applied to longer-term debt instruments, with maturity of at least one year. Corporate debt instruments with maturity shorter than one year are referred to as commercial paper.
In finance, a high-yield bond is a bond that is rated below investment grade. These bonds have a higher risk of default or other adverse credit events, but typically pay higher yields than better quality bonds in order to make them attractive to investors. Sometimes the company can provide new bonds as a part of yield which can only be redeemed after its expiry or maturity.
Citigroup Inc. or Citi is an American multinational investment bank and financial services corporation headquartered in New York City. The company was formed by the merger of banking giant Citicorp and financial conglomerate Travelers Group in 1998; Travelers was subsequently spun off from the company in 2002. Citigroup owns Citicorp, the holding company for Citibank, as well as several international subsidiaries.
Fixed income refers to any type of investment under which the borrower or issuer is obliged to make payments of a fixed amount on a fixed schedule. For example, the borrower may have to pay interest at a fixed rate once a year, and to repay the principal amount on maturity. Fixed-income securities can be contrasted with equity securities – often referred to as stocks and shares – that create no obligation to pay dividends or any other form of income.
Salomon Brothers was an American investment bank founded in 1910 by Arthur, Herbert and Percy Salomon and a clerk named Ben Levy, remaining a partnership until the early 1980s. It was acquired by the commodity trading firm Phibro Corporation and became Salomon Inc. Eventually, Salomon (NYSE:SB) was acquired by Travelers Group in 1998; and, following the latter's merger with Citicorp that same year, Salomon became part of Citigroup. Although the Salomon name carried on as Salomon Smith Barney, which were the investment banking operations of Citigroup, the name was abandoned in October 2003 after a series of financial scandals that tarnished the bank's reputation.
A collateralized debt obligation (CDO) is a type of structured asset-backed security (ABS). Originally developed as instruments for the corporate debt markets, after 2002 CDOs became vehicles for refinancing mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Like other private label securities backed by assets, a CDO can be thought of as a promise to pay investors in a prescribed sequence, based on the cash flow the CDO collects from the pool of bonds or other assets it owns. Distinctively, CDO credit risk is typically assessed based on a PD derived from ratings on those bonds or assets. The CDO is "sliced" into "tranches", which "catch" the cash flow of interest and principal payments in sequence based on seniority. If some loans default and the cash collected by the CDO is insufficient to pay all of its investors, those in the lowest, most "junior" tranches suffer losses first. The last to lose payment from default are the safest, most senior tranches. Consequently, coupon payments vary by tranche with the safest/most senior tranches receiving the lowest rates and the lowest tranches receiving the highest rates to compensate for higher default risk. As an example, a CDO might issue the following tranches in order of safeness: Senior AAA ; Junior AAA; AA; A; BBB; Residual.
The bond market is a financial market where participants can issue new debt, known as the primary market, or buy and sell debt securities, known as the secondary market. This is usually in the form of bonds, but it may include notes, bills, and so on.
A bond fund or debt fund is a fund that invests in bonds, or other debt securities. Bond funds can be contrasted with stock funds and money funds. Bond funds typically pay periodic dividends that include interest payments on the fund's underlying securities plus periodic realized capital appreciation. Bond funds typically pay higher dividends than CDs and money market accounts. Most bond funds pay out dividends more frequently than individual bonds.
The Bloomberg Barclays US Aggregate Bond Index, which until August 24, 2016 was called the Barclays Capital Aggregate Bond Index, and which until November 3, 2008 was called the "Lehman Aggregate Bond Index," is a broad base index, maintained by Bloomberg L.P. since August 24, 2016, and prior to then by Barclays which took over the index business of the now defunct Lehman Brothers, and is often used to represent investment grade bonds being traded in United States. Index funds and exchange-traded funds are available that track this bond index.
In investment, the bond credit rating represents the credit worthiness of corporate or government bonds. It is not the same as individual's credit score. The ratings are published by credit rating agencies and used by investment professionals to assess the likelihood the debt will be repaid.
The Merrill Lynch US High Yield Master II Index (H0A0) is a commonly used benchmark index for high-yield corporate bonds. It is administered by Merrill Lynch. The Master II is a measure of the broad high yield market, unlike the Merrill Lynch BB/B Index, which excludes lower-rated securities.
Emerging market debt (EMD) is a term used to encompass bonds issued by less developed countries. It does not include borrowing from government, supranational organizations such as the IMF or private sources, though loans that are securitized and issued to the markets would be included. A broader discussion of all types of borrowing by developing countries exists at Developing countries' debt.
The Merrill Lynch Domestic Master is a common American Bond index, analogous to the S&P 500 for stocks, owned by Merrill Lynch. The Domestic Master is similar to the Salomon BIG or the Barclays Capital Aggregate Bond Index. The Domestic Master Index was created on December 31, 1975. The index is re-balanced on the last calendar day of the month.
Note: The Salomon Smith Barney family of fixed income indices has been rebranded by Citigroup Fixed Income Index LLC. Then, on August 31, 2017 London Stock Exchange Group (“LSEG”) completed the acquisition of The Yield Book and Citi Fixed Income Indices businesses from Citi. The name has been changed from the Salomon Smith Barney World Government Bond Index, to the Citigroup World Government Bond Index and now the FTSE World Government Bond Index.
A bond index or bond market index is a method of measuring the value of a section of the bond market. It is computed from the prices of selected bonds. It is a tool used by investors and financial managers to describe the market, and to compare the return on specific investments.
Bonds securitizing mortgages are usually treated as a separate class, termed residential mortgage-backed security (RMBS). In that sense, making reference to the general package of financial agreements that typically represents cash yields that are paid to investors and that are supported by cash payments received from homeowners who pay interest and principal according to terms agreed to with their lenders; it is a funding instrument created by the "originator" or "sponsor" of the mortgage loan; without cross-collateralizing individual loans and mortgages, it is a funding instrument that pools the cash flow received from individuals and pays these cash receipts out with waterfall priorities that enable investors to become comfortable with the certainty of receipt of cash at any point in time.
CRE Finance Council is a trade organization for the commercial real estate finance markets. CRE Finance focuses on six Forums, market constituencies that encompass the commercial mortgage industry. These Forums include Investment-Grade Bondholders, Issuers, Multifamily Lenders, Securities and Loan Investors, Portfolio Lenders and Servicers. CRE Finance Council represents more than 300 member companies.
Thomas G. Maheras is a managing partner of Tegean Capital Management, LLC, a New York-based hedge fund founded in 2008.