Companies & Markets

The Day The Big Fat Junk-Bond Bubble Blew Up

Junk bonds had a phenomenal run. With each truckload of money that the Fed delivered to the markets, valuations soared and yields plunged. Desperate investors, mauled by the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policy, took on risks no questions asked. But suddenly the feeding frenzy turned into a brutal rout – a harbinger of things to come in other markets.

H-P’s Big Investors Finally Can’t Take It Anymore

Investors are fuming. But traders, the lucky ones who got the timing right, love it. So do Wall Street firms that shuffle companies around. For decades, Hewlett-Packard did what they wanted it to do: swallow other companies, whole or in pieces, spit out some mangled limbs, and dump tens of thousands of employees. But someone ended up holding the bag.