
Pricing levels across the US CLO secondary market have kept increasing through January.
"Everything is getting tighter in secondary," says one trader. "Meanwhile, new issue spreads are tightening and then those bonds are trading up in the secondary market too."
The driver behind spreads narrowing is currently a simple one, according to the trader. "For the past two or three weeks it's been the same story across the board - customers have money and they need to spend it."
There is activity throughout the capital stack, but the trader adds: "We are seeing a lot of equity trade at the moment. There could be a range of reasons for that, from reinvestment terms getting looser, to valuations issues, or it could just simply be people rotating out of the sector."
There is currently no equity on today's US CLO BWIC calendar with volumes hampered by month-end and only two fairly small lists from higher up the stack circulating. However, there are already two equity auctions visible for tomorrow, 1 February, both due at 11:00 New York time.
One is a single $950k line of CFIP 2014-1I INC. The bond has not covered on PriceABS before.
The other is a 15 line $118.975m list comprising: APID 2017-27X SUB, CGMS 2017-2A SUB, CGMS 2017-2X SUB, CGMS 2017-3X SUB, CIFC 2013-1A SUB, CIFC 2013-1X SUB, CIFC 2013-2A INC, CIFC 2014-1A INC, CIFC 2014-1I SUB, CIFC 2016-1X SUB, CIFC 2017-1X SUB, ICG 2016-1X SUB, MIDO 2017-7X INC, OCT29 2016-1X SUB and OCT30 2017-1X SUB.
Only CIFC 2013-2A INC has covered on PriceABS in the past three months - at 46.36 on 30 January.