High Anxiety in High Yield

This city's mad in the head
And sick in the soul
All the stars flew away 
A long time ago
--Flesh For Lulu

Bears are eyeing the recent weakness in high yield (read: junk) bonds as a harbinger of what's to come in stocks. From a technical standpoint, it is true that junk has broken from a near term uptrend:

But pull back the time horizon a bit and the current weakness barely registers:

Because credit weakness often precedes equity weakness, the situation is worth watching. As of now, however, the action in high yield seems to be stirring little more than high anxiety among the bears.

no positions