MARKETS

The choppy behavior of the major indices continued, with all dropping on Monday by moderate percentages as shown above. Apparently, according to Yahoo Finance, and other sources, investors are brooding about “ ongoing signs of inflation and supply-related challenges and awaited more data on corporate earnings“.  Those are good enough explanations for this sub-(1%) drop.

The BDC sector followed the general trend down, but not as sharply. BDCZ – the UBS Exchange Traded Note which owns most BDC public stocks – was off by (0.28%), closing at $20.01. The only BDC ETF – ticker BIZD – fell only (0.17%) to $17.20, but did move up to $17.30 before weakening with everyone else.

20 BDCs went up in price, 20 went down and 2 were unchanged. More than ever, individual price volatility was very low, with the biggest percentage price increase recorded by Capital Southwest (CSWC) – up 2.13%. At the other end of the spectrum was PhenixFIN (PFX) which fell only (1.87%) on very low volume. As we’ve been saying of late, BDC investors are mostly staying put these days, waiting for a sign from above and/or IIIQ 2021 earnings. Generalized anxiety about “inflation” and “supply-related challenges” are not enough to cause most investors to decamp.

By the way more and more BDCs are announcing the dates of their next earnings release and conference call timing. As a result, we’ve been playing catch up inputting this useful data into the BDC Earnings Table, one of the services we offer to our readers. Still, BDC season is still a few weeks away.

NEWS

We looked around for any BDC news to share with you, but besides the afore-mentioned press releases concerning earnings, there was nothing to report.

This will give us time to focus on completing our half finished part two of the primer on Cion Investment (CION).