HY Market Weekly Minutes: Is There Anything That Will Break The Market? (February 3, 2025)
A Brief Recap of Last Week's High Yield Market Performance
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If you blinked today, you might have missed the panic.
Markets opened in freefall after Trump’s weekend announcement of 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, but reversed course by midday following emergency calls with both leaders. By the time everyone finished calculating the potential impact, the trade war was over and high yield closed just 5bps wider. That’s the 2025 market for you.
Speaking of short-lived panics—remember DeepSeek? Last Monday’s AI scare sent Nvidia plunging $600 billion in a single day (the largest market cap loss in history), but high yield barely flinched. Even more telling: while tech stocks were in freefall, the market absorbed over $13 billion of new deals—the busiest week since November 2021.
Want to know what’s really happening? While the tourists panic over headlines, real money keeps stepping in. Quikrete just printed $5.45 billion—the seventh-largest secured deal ever. That’s not what happens in a crisis. Meanwhile, Powell’s “not in a hurry” to cut rates, China’s factory data is flashing red, and cash bonds actually firmed over the week after a soft start.
The question isn’t whether the market can handle bad news anymore. It’s whether the bears will ever learn to stop fighting the technicals.