Americas

Bonds from major Mexican issuers tightened on Monday after the USA and Mexico announced a preliminary bilateral trade to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).

The amount of debt at the risky end of the US corporate bond market has tripled since the financial crisis, possibly putting pressure on the high yield market if downgrades start to climb, Fitch Ratings said last Friday.

Venezuela's petro seems destined to hang around like a bad smell rather than drifting into obscurity, as it deserves to. The country's president Nicolás Maduro has made it the basis of his country’s economy. It is an utter farce.

ABN Amro took advantage of a stable background and quiet market conditions to re-open the Yankee bank market this week, with a $2bn trade that attracted more than $7bn in orders.

Equity strategists at a bulge bracket bank are foreseeing volatility in Bayer’s share price around the time its €4bn mandatorily convertible bond matures next year, particularly because of its legal problems over a Monsanto weedkiller, and are pitching clients a strategy to profit from this, writes Costas Mourselas.

The US corporate bond market slowed to a trickle this week with just a handful of smaller deals as desks thinned out ahead of the Labor Day holiday.

At least $8bn in IPOs from Asian issuers could hit screens in September alone, if everything goes according to plan. But with investor sentiment still on the rocks despite the mid-year lull coming to a close, equity capital markets bankers are hoping for a swift end to what has been a summer of volatility. John Loh reports.

The US S&P 500 index hit a record high on Tuesday, which means that the US equity bull market had, by most standards, equalled the longest in history. Nevertheless primary equity market practitioners seem to retain a sense of gloom that the good times are about to end.

Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group on Wednesday said that it would launch two new interest rate futures referencing the sterling overnight index average (Sonia) on October 1.

New US sanctions announcements on Russia, chatter around new IMF financing for Angola and a desperate economic recovery plan in Venezuela are keeping those emerging market portfolio managers still at their desks busy. But low volumes are playing havoc with EM secondary levels as traders embrace the quietest trading week of the summer.

The pipeline of Asian IPOs headed for the US is shaping up for September, with the latest crop of issuers all starting to drum up investor interest.

Venezuela has adopted a radical approach in its attempt to rein in its out-of-control economy, effectively devaluing its currency by almost 96% and pegging the value to Venezuela’s oil-backed pseudo-cryptocurrency — widely considered a scam.