The debt markets have outperformed themselves during 2013,
harkening back to the boom years of 2005 through 2007. That is, if
you measure performance by the amount of liquidity in the
market.
In the context of an overall low interest rate environment,
pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, hedge funds and
other alternative capital sources have sought to invest in
higher-yielding instruments provided by the bond market and the
broadly syndicated loan market. For instance, the second lien loan
market, notably absent during the latest financial crisis, is back
with renewed enthusiasm. Credit demand has continued to outstrip
credit supply, which has led to mostly opportunistic transactions,
consisting of re-financings, re-pricings and to a lesser extent
dividend recaps. Underlying the low interest rate environment is
the Federal Reserve's continued bond-buying program, known as
quantitative easing. As a case in point, when the Federal Reserve
hinted that it
