Companies raise over half a trillion dollars of debt in record Jan - Refinitiv The U.S. Federal Reserve signalled at the start of January that it may tighten monetary policy earlier than expected, which may also include shrinking its $8-trillion balance sheet. That has triggered a global sell-off in bond markets and risk assets with bond yields rising sharply as traders priced in nearly five rate hikes from the Fed over the remainder of 2022. U.S. banks and financial institutions were a key driver of issuance, raising $104 billion in the U.S. in a record January. "We had expected to see a deceleration from financials not needing to raise as much as capital as last year but a lot of these issues are among the most savvy in the market in terms of navigating borrowing conditions," Cisar at CreditSights said. Despite a 40 bps yield rise on U.S. investment-grade corporate bonds in the U.S., according to BofA indexes, borrowing costs are still historically low, so companies can continue issuing cheap debt and bring down their overall funding costs. Companies in BofA's U.S. investment-grade corporate index could see borrowing costs rise another 80 basis points before they exceed the coupons they pay, according to Refinitiv Datastream. In contrast were sub investment-grade companies, where after a record run in 2021, bond issuance more than halved compared to last January at $32 billion. (This story has been refiled to remove erroneous mention of euros in paragraph 3)
%% Good thing FB has no or low debt level. They could be down a lot more than 23% with high debt. Don't know the debt level of duck duck go/ but they meddle less /don't censor/micro manage their customers like FB does........................................