Blue-chip firms have sold $188.57 billion of bonds in the U.S. in January, setting a record for the month, as companies look to take advantage of drops in longer-term borrowing costs, Bloomberg News reported. The sales broke the prior record for January of around $175 billion, set in 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News. And more sales are probably coming through the end of the month, Wall Street bond syndicate professionals said. “We could easily see $200 billion of sales this month,” said Jonny Fine, head of the investment-grade debt syndicate at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. International Business Machines Corp., Capital One Financial Corp. and Kinder Morgan Inc. are among the companies tapping the market on Monday. Even if this month is the most active January on record, it is still short of the overall most active month for bond sales, April 2020’s $285 billion. Sales have jumped after investors’ growing realization that the Federal Reserve was done raising rates to tame inflation and might start cutting soon pushed bond yields lower, trimming borrowing costs for companies. The average yield on a note maturing in 10 years or more had fallen to 5.44% on Friday, from 6.6% in mid-October.
