Investors flee Argentine debt
heading for a level hit last month that was the widest in three
years.
While the moves happened in thin trade on the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, they add to a 300 bps rise in yield spreads since early October when jitters began to mount that the South American country could be headed for default exactly 10 years after its $100 billion smash in 2002. Fund managers said Argentine bonds were marked roughly 10 percent down across the board while credit default swaps, used to insure against default, are near the highest since May 2009 above 2400 basis points, according to data from Markit.
That's up from less than 1000 basis points in early October. "We haven't had a default on our portfolio since we started the fund 12 years ago and sometimes the signals are so strong you know something bad is going to happen," said Jeremy Brewin, a portfolio manager at Aviva Investors. "At a time like this you want to be neutral or underweight. "New York federal judge Thomas Griesa on Wednesday ordered Buenos Aires to immediately pay "holdout" investors who shunned two exchanges of defaulted sovereign debt in
