tiger tradeJunk bonds, also known less pejoratively as high-yield bonds, are bonds that are rated as “speculative” or “below investment” grade issues:
垃圾债券，也被称为高收益债券的贬值，是被评为“投机”或“低于投资”等级问题的债券：
below BBB for bondsrated by Moody’s and below Baa for bonds rated by Standard and Poor’s (the two main debt-rating agencies). Bond ratings measure the perceived risk that the bonds’ issuer will not make interest payments or repay the principal at maturity. The riskier a bond is, other things being equal, the lower its rating. The highest-rated nondefaulted bonds are rated AAA or Aaa, and the lowest are rated C, with defaulted bonds rated D; thus, junk bonds can be rated anywhere between Baa (BB) and D. As junk bonds are perceived to be riskier than other types of debt, they typically trade at higher yields—that is, higher rates of return—than investment-grade bonds.
由标准普尔（两家主要的债务评级机构）评级的债券，由穆迪和低于Baa的债券低于BBB。债券评级衡量债券发行人在到期时不会支付利息或偿还本金的感知风险。债券风险较高，其他条件相同，其评级越低。评级最高的非瑕疵债券评级为AAA或Aaa，最低评级为C级，违约债券评级为D;因此，垃圾债券可以在Baa（BB）和D之间的任何地方评级。由于垃圾债券被认为比其他类型的债券风险更大，它们通常以更高的收益率交易 - 即，更高的收益率 - 而不是投资级债券。
Over the past twenty years, this difference, or spread, between junk bonds and U.S. Treasury bonds has varied between three and nine percentage points, averaging six percentage points. The debt of 95 percent of U.S. companies with revenues over $35 million (and of 100 percent of companies with revenues less than that) is rated noninvestment grade, or junk. Today, junk bond issuers that are household names include U.S. Steel, Delta, and Dole Foods. Moreover, the use of high-yield securities for corporate financing greatly expanded after the mid-1990s in Latin America, Asia, and Europe (both in transition markets in Central and Eastern Europe and in the European Union). Many high-yield bonds issued in the United States are now placed by foreign corporations spurred by privatizations, mergers and restructurings, and new technology expansions.
在过去二十年中，垃圾债券和美国国债之间的这种差异或差异在3到9个百分点之间变化，平均为6个百分点。收入超过3500万美元的95％的美国公司（以及收入低于此的公司的100％）的债务被评为非投资级别或垃圾级别。今天，家喻户晓的垃圾债券发行人包括美国钢铁公司，达美航空公司和多尔食品公司。此外，在20世纪90年代中期以后，在拉丁美洲，亚洲和欧洲（中欧和东欧的转型市场以及欧盟），高收益证券用于企业融资的情况大大扩展。在私有化，兼并和重组以及新技术扩张的刺激下，美国发行的许多高收益债券现在由外国公司提供。
The history of high-yield bonds is nearly as long as the history of public capital markets, with early issuers including General Motors, IBM, J. P. Morgan’s U.S. Steel in the first few decades of the twentieth century, and the United States of America soon after the nation’s founding in the 1780s.
高收益债券的历史几乎与公共资本市场的历史一样长，早期发行人包括通用汽车，IBM，摩根大通在二十世纪的前几十年的美国钢铁，以及不久后的美国这个国家在19世纪80年代成立。
The public market for new-issue junk bonds gradually atrophied, and for most of the twentieth century—up to the 1970s—all new publicly issued bonds were investment grade. The only publicly traded junk bonds were ones that had once been investment grade but had become “fallen angels,” having been downgraded to junk as the financial condition of the issuer deteriorated. The interest payments on these bonds were not high, but with the bonds selling at pennies on the dollar, their yields were quite high. Companies deemed speculative grade were effectively shut out of the public capital market and had to rely on more expensive and restrictive bank loans and private placements (where bonds are sold directly to investors such as insurance companies). Interestingly, even though these private placements were riskier than the public high-yield bonds of the 1980s, they were never labeled “junk.” Indeed, the label “junk” and the decision about what level of risk it applies to, though now well established, is essentially arbitrary.
新发行的垃圾债券的公开市场逐渐萎缩，在二十世纪的大部分时间里 - 直至二十世纪七十年代 - 所有新发行的公开债券都是投资级别。唯一公开交易的垃圾债券曾经是投资级别但已成为“堕落天使”的债券，由于发行人的财务状况恶化而被降级为垃圾债券。这些债券的利息支付不高，但由于债券以美分的价格卖出，其收益率相当高。被视为投机级别的公司实际上被排除在公共资本市场之外，不得不依赖更昂贵和限制性的银行贷款和私募（债券直接出售给投资者，如保险公司）。有趣的是，尽管这些私人配售比20世纪80年代的公共高收益债券风险更大，但它们从未被标记为“垃圾”。事实上，标签“垃圾”以及它适用于什么级别的风险的决定，尽管现在很好建立，基本上是武断的。
Financial conditions in the United States in the 1970s set the stage for the success of the junk-bond market. The collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates (see foreign exchange) resulted in an upward spiral of inflation and interest rates. By the mid-1970s, three decades of interest rate stability came to an abrupt end, and short-term borrowing costs doubled in less than two years. At the same time, two oil shocks and a recession sent stock prices into a two-year slide that reduced the market value of U.S. firms by more than 40 percent. Banks curtailed lending to all but the largest and highest-rated companies, and as yields in the open market rose above government-set interest-rate ceilings on bank deposits, funds flowed out of the banking system into money market accounts. As this “credit crunch” spread, only the most creditworthy borrowers could receive credit, and, paradoxically, the most innovative companies—those with the highest returns on capital and the fastest rates of growth—had the least access to capital. From these circumstances, the contemporary high-yield securities market emerged.
20世纪70年代美国的财政状况为垃圾债券市场的成功奠定了基础。布雷顿森林体系固定汇率制度的崩溃（见外汇）导致通货膨胀和利率上升。到20世纪70年代中期，三十年的利率稳定突然结束，短期借贷成本在不到两年的时间内翻了一番。与此同时，两次石油危机和经济衰退使股价陷入两年下滑，使美国公司的市值下降了40％以上。除了最大和评级最高的公司之外，银行减少贷款，并且随着公开市场的收益率超过政府设定的银行存款利率上限，资金从银行系统流入货币市场账户。随着这种“信贷紧缩”的蔓延，只有最有信誉的借款人才能获得信贷，而矛盾的是，最具创新性的公司 - 那些资本回报最高，增长率最快的公司 - 获得的资金最少。从这些情况看，当代高收益证券市场应运而生。
If other debt is “junior” to junk bonds—that is, if junk-bond owners can be paid ahead of other debtors—then, in the event of a default, other debtors will be hurt. But these other debtors can protect themselves with debt covenants (see bonds) that give them certain rights when junk bonds are issued in a recapitalization or merger transaction.
如果其他债务是垃圾债券的“初级” - 也就是说，如果垃圾债券所有者可以在其他债务人之前支付 - 那么，如果违约，其他债务人将受到伤害。但这些其他债务人可以通过债务契约（见债券）来保护自己，这些契约在债券发行或合并交易中发行垃圾债券时赋予他们一定的权利。
The market for new-issue junk bonds dramatically reopened for business in 1977 when Bear Stearns and Company underwrote the first new-issue junk bond in decades. Soon thereafter, Drexel Burnham brought the debt of seven below-investment-grade companies to market. By 1983 more than one-third of all corporate bond issues were noninvestment grade. Today, the junk-bond market, by most definitions, exceeds half a trillion dollars.
1977年，当贝尔斯登公司承销了几十年来第一个新发行的垃圾债券时，新发行的垃圾债券市场大幅重新开业。此后不久，Drexel Burnham将七家低于投资级公司的债务推向市场。到1983年，超过三分之一的公司债券发行均为非投资级别。今天，按大多数定义，垃圾债券市场超过五万亿美元。
This explosive growth had several causes. High-yield bonds were extremely attractive for borrowers, as they had lower interest rates and greater liquidity than private placements, and they imposed fewer restrictions on the actions of the borrowers (restrictive covenants) than either loans or private placements. The value of high-yield bonds to investors, moreover, was strengthened by the research of W. Braddock Hickman, Thomas R. Atkinson, Orin K. Burrell, and others, who discovered that below-investment-grade debt earned a higher risk-adjusted rate of return than investment-grade bonds. In other words, the interest rate that premium junk bonds offered more than compensated investors for the added risk of default. Michael Milken trumpeted these insights to both his investor customers and entrepreneurs seeking growth capital, with stunning success. The companies Milken financed with these bonds created millions of new jobs between the 1970s and 1990s.
这种爆炸式增长有几个原因。高收益债券对借款人极具吸引力，因为他们的利率较低，流动性高于私人配售，并且他们对借款人（限制性契约）的行为施加的限制比贷款或私人配售更少。此外，W. Braddock Hickman，Thomas R. Atkinson，Orin K. Burrell和其他人的研究加强了投资者对高收益债券的价值，他们发现低于投资级债务的风险更高 - 调整后的回报率高于投资级债券。换句话说，优质垃圾债券提供的利率超过了补偿投资者增加违约风险的利率。迈克尔米尔肯向他的投资者客户和寻求增长资本的企业家大肆宣传这些见解，并取得了惊人的成功。由这些债券融资的米尔肯公司在20世纪70年代和90年代之间创造了数百万个新工作岗位。
The 1980s saw the junk-bond market grow from $10 billion in 1979 to $189 billion in 1989, an increase of 34 percent per year. Borrowers in new and emerging industries in the 1980s included Turner Broadcasting, MCI Communications, and McCaw Cellular (now part of Cingular Wireless). As well as financing innovation, junk bonds allowed firms and industries in distress to restructure and increased efficiency through the market for corporate control. Junk bonds financed the successful restructuring of numerous manufacturing firms, including Chrysler, and funded consolidations in a host of industries. During this period, yields averaged 14.5 percent while default rates averaged just 2.2 percent—a combination that resulted in annual total returns of some 13.7 percent, on average. This period ended by 1989, when a politically driven campaign by Rudolph Giuliani and financial competitors that had previously dominated corporate credit markets against the high-yield market resulted in a temporary market collapse and the bankruptcy of Drexel Burnham. Almost overnight, the market for newly issued junk bonds disappeared, and no significant new junk issues came to market for more than a year. Investors lost 4.4 percent in 1990, the first year of negative returns in a decade.
20世纪80年代，垃圾债券市场从1979年的100亿美元增长到1989年的1,890亿美元，每年增长34％。20世纪80年代新兴行业的借款人包括特纳广播，MCI通信和麦考蜂窝（现在是Cingular Wireless的一部分）。除了融资创新之外，垃圾债券还允许陷入困境的公司和行业通过公司控制市场进行重组和提高效率。垃圾债券为包括克莱斯勒在内的众多制造企业的成功重组提供了资金，并资助了许多行业的合并。在此期间，收益率平均为14.5％，而违约率平均仅为2.2％ - 这一组合导致年平均回报率约为13.7％。这一时期结束于1989年，当时Rudolph Giuliani和金融竞争者的政治驱动，此前曾主导企业信贷市场对抗高收益市场，导致市场暂时崩溃和Drexel Burnham破产。几乎在一夜之间，新发行的垃圾债券市场消失了，一年多来没有重大的新垃圾问题上市。投资者在1990年损失了4.4％，这是十年来负收益的第一年。
The market rebounded sharply in 1991 with positive total returns of a stunning 40 percent. The 1990s saw the market mature with increased emphasis by traders and investors on risk and portfolio management. Junk bonds left the controversy of the 1980s behind and became just another, albeit rather profitable, asset class. Default rates fell from their 1990 and 1991 highs (10.1 and 10.3 percent, respectively) to single digits in the 1990s, with an average rate of 2.4 percent from 1992 to 2000. From 1990 to 1999, the market returned an average of 15 percent annually. During this same period, the market grew from $181 billion to $567 billion, an average annual increase of 13 percent.
1991年市场大幅反弹，总回报率达到惊人的40％。20世纪90年代，市场成熟，交易员和投资者越来越重视风险和投资组合管理。垃圾债券让20世纪80年代的争议落后，成为另一个虽然盈利能力相当的资产类别。违约率从1990年和1991年的高点（分别为10.1和10.3％）降至1990年代的个位数，从1992年到2000年平均为2.4％。从1990年到1999年，市场每年平均回报率为15％ 。在同一时期，市场从1810亿美元增长到5670亿美元，平均每年增长13％。
From 2000 to 2002, difficulties in the telecom industry, combined with the general downturn in U.S. economic activity, resulted in high default rates and disappointing total returns in the junk-bond market. The average default rate for this short period was 9.2 percent (more than four and a half times the average rate for the period 1992–1999), and the average annual total rate of return was 0 percent. Indeed, 2002 was a record year for defaults and bankruptcies, but the number of defaults decreased dramatically in 2003. The high-yield market recovered from this downturn as the telecom defaults became a thing of the past and the U.S. economy emerged from recession. The default rate in 2003 was 4.7 percent (down from 12.8 percent the year before), and year-to-date in 2004 was 2.41 percent. At the same time, the total rate of return for these years was 29 percent and 10.3 percent, respectively.
从2000年到2002年，电信行业的困难加上美国经济活动普遍下滑，导致垃圾债券市场的违约率高，总回报率令人失望。这一短期的平均违约率为9.2％（超过1992 - 1999年期间平均税率的4.5倍），年平均总回报率为0％。实际上，2002年是违约和破产创纪录的一年，但违约数量在2003年大幅下降。高收益市场从这次经济衰退中复苏，因为电信违约已成为过去，美国经济摆脱衰退。 2003年的违约率为4.7％（低于前一年的12.8％），2004年的年度至今为2.41％。与此同时，这些年的总回报率分别为29％和10.3％。
Despite external shocks to the market, such as the bankruptcy of Drexel Burnham, two wars in Iraq, three recessions, and the disruption of markets following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the new-issue and secondary markets recovered, issuers continued to tap the market, and institutional buyers returned. The continuing strength of the junk-bond market is based on linking the U.S. economy’s need for capital with investors’ need for high returns.
尽管市场出现外部冲击，例如Drexel Burnham破产，伊拉克两场战争，三次经济衰退以及2001年9月11日恐怖袭击事件后市场中断，新发行和二级市场恢复，发行人继续挖掘市场，机构买家回归。垃圾债券市场的持续强势是基于将美国经济的资本需求与投资者对高回报的需求联系起来。
The Strange Case of Michael Milken
迈克尔米尔肯的诡异案例(米尔肯被称为垃圾债券大王）
David R. Henderson
A discussion of the junk-bond era of the 1980s would be incomplete without at least a brief exposition of the legal case involving Michael Milken. Press accounts at the time promoted the view that Milken had committed serious crimes. Two journalists who repeatedly made these claims were Wall Street Journal reporter James Stewart and Barron’s writer Ben Stein. Stein, in fact, even claimed that Milken had run a “vast Ponzi” scheme. But there was nothing illegal about the use of junk bonds per se. Instead, Milken pled guilty to six felony counts of illegal activity, five of which had been previously understood to be simple technical violations of the law rather than actual crimes. The judge found the total economic effect of all the violations to be $318,082.
如果不至少简单地阐述涉及迈克尔米尔肯的法律案件，那么对20世纪80年代垃圾债券时代的讨论将是不完整的。当时的新闻报道推动了米尔肯犯下严重罪行的观点。两位反复提出这些主张的记者是华尔街日报记者詹姆斯斯图尔特和巴伦的作家本斯坦。事实上，斯坦因甚至声称米尔肯已经实施了“巨大的庞氏骗局”计划。但是，使用垃圾债券本身没有任何违法行为。相反，米尔肯对六项重罪非法活动表示认罪，其中五项以前被认为是简单的技术性违法行为而非实际罪行。法官认为，所有违法行为的总经济影响为318,082美元。
Four of the six counts involved Milken’s dealings with arbitrageur Ivan Boesky. Boesky had paid Drexel, Milken’s firm, $5.3 million, which was plausibly—as Milken claimed—simply the value that Drexel and Boesky placed on various reciprocal favors on a number of transactions. The government claimed, to the contrary, that the $5.3 million payment was the net amount Boesky owed after the gains and losses on various illegal securities transactions. But even if the government’s claim is true (and there is no evidence that it is), Milken’s “crime” was that he had not properly documented the ownership of some stock. The government never identified anyone injured by this failure to document.
六项计数中有四项涉及米尔肯与套利者Ivan Boesky的交易。 Boesky向Milken的公司支付了530万美元的Drexel，这正如Milken声称的那样 - 只是Drexel和Boesky在许多交易中对各种互惠优惠的价值。相反，政府声称，530万美元的付款是Boesky在各种非法证券交易的损益后所欠的净额。但即使政府的说法属实（并且没有证据表明），米尔肯的“犯罪”就是他没有正确记录某些股票的所有权。政府从未发现因未能记录而受伤的人。
The fifth count was that Milken failed to disclose an agreement with a man named David Solomon, by which Solomon would adjust some transactions prices of stocks to favor Drexel. The adjustments were small enough that they were within the bid-ask spread but large enough to keep Drexel interested in doing business with Solomon’s firm, Finsbury Group Ltd. Although Milken did fail to disclose, no one was hurt by this nondisclosure.
第五个问题是米尔肯没有透露与一个名叫大卫·所罗门的人达成的协议，所罗门将调整一些股票的交易价格以支持德雷克塞尔。这些调整规模很小，以至于它们都在买卖差价范围内，但足以使Drexel对与Solomon的公司Finsbury Group Ltd.做生意感兴趣。尽管Milken确实没有披露，但没有人受到这种不披露的影响。
The sixth and final count was Milken’s having assisted Solomon in filing a false 1985 tax return. The problem with the government’s case was that the return was not false. Solomon claimed a real economic loss, something he had the legal right to do.
第六个也是最后一个案件是米尔肯帮助所罗门提交1985年的虚假纳税申报表。政府案件的问题在于回报并非虚假。所罗门声称有真正的经济损失，他有合法的权利。
Why, then, did Milken plead guilty and accept a prison sentence rather than fight the charges and pay a fine for technical violations? The reason was that an aggressive and politically ambitious prosecutor, Rudolph Giuliani, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, took extreme measures to go after Milken. Giuliani let Drexel off with a reduced penalty in return for the firm’s cooperation in convicting Milken. Guiliani even invoked the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to charge Milken with “racketeering.” When RICO was passed in 1970, it was aimed at organized crime, but Giuliani used it to get Milken.
那么，为什么米尔肯认罪并接受监禁而不是指控并因技术违法而被罚款？原因在于，一位咄咄逼人且具有政治野心的检察官，纽约南区的美国检察官鲁道夫朱利亚尼（Rudolph Giuliani）采取了极端措施来追捕米尔肯。朱利安尼让德雷克塞尔以减刑为由，以换取该公司与米尔肯定罪的合作。 Guiliani甚至援引了“诈骗和腐败组织法案”（RICO），以“敲诈勒索”向米尔肯收费。当RICO于1970年通过时，它的目标是有组织犯罪，但朱利安尼用它来给米尔肯定罪。
尽管如此，当米尔巴伍德法官判处他10年徒刑时，米尔肯甚至可能感到震惊。后来，伍德将米尔肯的刑期减为两年，表面上是因为米尔肯在其他案件中与检方合作。尽管如此，米尔肯的合作是微不足道的，因为他一直坚持说出全部真相，即使这会损害政府在其他案件中的机会。经济学家Daniel Fischel推测伍德有时间意识到她的错误。在最初判刑后，她的同事路易斯坦顿法官曾表示，米尔肯认罪的“重罪”并非重罪。伍德意识到第二巡回法院已经扭转了许多朱利安尼对各种人的定罪，这些人面临类似米尔肯的指控。
未经允许不得转载：tiger trade » 深入理解垃圾债券（一）
