The bond market has seen some hard times recently. The Barclays Aggregate Bond Index, sort of an S&P 500 for fixed-income investors, has been having a terrible year, losing 2.7 percent of its value as of the end of last week. Part of the reason for that is that companies have really slowed down in the amount of debt they're issuing.
In the month of June, companies worldwide issued $144 billion in new bonds, down from an average of $316 billion over the first five months of the year. The June figure for new issuances was the lowest since December of 2011.
It's not just one category or another of corporate bonds that have slowed. Investment grade bonds dropped from an average of $169 billion over the first five months to $65 billion in June; high-yield (or "junk") bonds dropped from an average of $52 billion to $19 billion.
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