HY Market Weekly Minutes: CPI Screamed, High Yield Yawned—And Priced $3.25bn Anyway (February 18, 2025)
A Brief Recap of Last Week's High Yield Market Performance
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The macro tourists are learning the hard way - again. Last Wednesday’s CPI print sent Treasury yields soaring, but high yield saw through the noise, focusing instead on cooling PPI components. The result? Spreads closed 4bps tighter on the week to 260bps. That’s not what panic looks like.
Even better? While everyone was busy reading Fed tea leaves, Snap (yeah, THE Snapchat) casually dropped its high yield debut—a $1.5 billion deal that was upsized by $800 million. Another four US deals for $3.25 billion in total, all pricing through talk. So much for that inflation scare.
Perhaps investors are finally getting jaded to the macro circus. While the economists debate decimal points in CPI, real money is focused on what matters—credit selection. Just ask Gen Digital and Credit Acceptance Corp, who both squeezed pricing tighter while the macro tourists were still updating their Fed models….
Here’s what the most keep missing: when you can upsize deals right after a hot inflation print, it’s not about the macro anymore. It’s about the flow. And right now? The flow is absolutely crushing the narrative.