40 The Time-Line Follow-Back Interview (TLFB 41) yields indices for quantity and frequency of alcohol, cigarette, drug and other tobacco use in the 90 days prior to the BL assessment.
The corresponding high-yield index is up more than twice as much.
The KDP high-yield index, which tracks yields on junk bonds, climbed this week to its highest level since early 2003.
The market has generally been receptive, with the average yield on casino junk bonds at 8.5percentt, according to Merrill Lynch's high-yield index.
Since last October, the Merrill Lynch high-yield index has narrowed the better part of 400 basis points, or the better part of four percentage points.
And the KDP High Yield Index, a measure of the cost of loans for companies with poor credit, has risen from under 11percenttotoverer 17percentt.
The return so far this year through Thursday for single Bs, which make up 46.2percentt of the Lehman high-yield index, is not bad at all at 24.9percentt.
The average yield on Merrill Lynch's high-yield index is about 12.5percentt and the yield on corporate bonds at the low end of the investment grade scale is about 7percentt.
(But the yields on bonds below investment grade -- junk bonds in market parlance -- are more than three-quarters of a percentage point higher than their 11.98 percent peak in January 1995, according to Chase Manhattan's high-yield index).
Such debt, also known as high-yield bonds, has returned 10.2 percent year-to-date, according to a JPMorgan high-yield index.
In 2008, the Merrill Lynch high-yield index fell 26 percent, while the total return of the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index was a negative 37 percent.
