Bear Stearns High Yield Index returns 1.61% in November, ends month with 10.40% year-to-date return

By Paul A. Harris

St. Louis, Dec. 4 - The Bear Stearns High Yield Index returned 1.61% for the month of November, ending the period with a 10.40% year-to-date return

During the most recent week, the yield to worst narrowed by 11 basis points to 7.95% and the yield-to-worst spread increased by a single basis point to 346 bps.

For the month of November, all 12 industry sectors showed positive returns.

The outperformer for the month was the health care sector with a 2.57% return, which upped its year-to-date performance to 2.97% - still the underperformer among all 12 industry sectors in the index.

Its hospital management component, with a 3.93% November return - the highest among all subsectors in the index - led the healthcare sector's November advance. Despite that performance, hospital management ended November with a negative 0.94% year-to-date return. It was one of only two subsectors with negative year-to-date returns with 11 months in the books.

The other, also a health care component, was diagnostic services, at negative 15.35% for the first 11 months of 2006, despite having gained 0.43% during November.

With regard to November returns, second to health care's hospital management component was the consumer cyclical sector's automobile manufacturing-related subsector, which generated a 2.74% return on the month to advance its year-to-date return to 22.05%, third-best among all index subsectors.

Edging automobile manufacturing-related's performance by a nose was the telecommunications sector's long distance component with a 22.08% return for the year to Nov. 30, having picked up 1.10% on the month.

Topping all the subsectors, however, was transportation's airlines component with its 35.75% year-to-date return. Airlines advanced 1.93% during November.

To lend some scale to these returns, airlines represents a mere 0.09% of the index composite, whereas long distance makes up 1.19% of the composite, and automobile manufacturing related - the largest of all the index subsectors - represents 14.14%.

The consumer cyclical sector led the index in terms of year-to-date total return: 14.69% to the end of November, having gained 2.10% on the month.

For the month to Nov. 30, the index had a market value of $602.953 billion, and the issue count stood at 1,641.

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