“Junk-pocalypse Now”

Suddenly, everyone is talking about the HY canary in the stretched market coal mine.

As if it hasn’t been readily apparent for at least three months that the rally off last February’s deflationary doldrums wasn’t absurdly overdone.

And as if the relative spread compression (i.e. HY versus IG) that’s been unfolding for some four months wasn’t further evidence that junk was far, far too rich.

Basically: “as if HY didn’t represent the poorest, most asymmetrically skewed risk/reward scenario across all asset classes, point blank, period.”

Well, investors have woken up. Have a look at the following series of charts (from BofAML) which depict the extent to which folks are getting nervous (click to enlarge):

Oh, and in case there are still questions…