Elsewhere in credit markets, the cost of protecting corporate debt from default in the U.S. rose, with the Markit CDX North American Investment Grade Index, which investors use to hedge against losses or to speculate on creditworthiness, increasing 0.06 basis point to a mid-price of 86 basis points as of 11:02 a.m. in New York, according to prices compiled by Bloomberg.

The index typically rises as investor confidence deteriorates and falls as it improves. Credit-default swaps pay the buyer face value if a borrower fails to meet its obligations, less the value of the defaulted debt. A basis point equals $1,000 annually on a contract protecting $10 million of debt.

Heinz Bonds

The U.S. two-year interest-rate swap spread, a measure of debt market stress, fell 0.23 basis point to 15.11 basis points as of 11:04 a.m. in New York. The gauge narrows when investors favor assets such as company debentures and widens when they seek the perceived safety of government securities.

Bonds of H.J. Heinz Co. are the most actively traded dollar-denominated corporate securities by dealers today, accounting for 6.3 percent of the volume of dealer trades of $1 million or more, at 11:05 a.m. in New York, according to Trace, the bond-price reporting system of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

The company, based in Pittsburgh, obtained $14.1 billion in financing from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. to support the ketchup maker’s $23 billion buyout by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and 3G Capital, according to a regulatory filing today.

‘Caution’ Raised

Fuss, whose Loomis Sayles Bond Fund beat 98 percent of its peers in the past three years, said last month that junk debt is “overbought as I’ve ever seen it,” while Oaktree’s Marks told clients in a January memo that “this is a time for caution.”

Yields on junk bonds, rated below Baa3 by Moody’s Investors Service and lower than BBB- at Standard & Poor’s, fell to a record low of 6.41 percent on Jan. 25, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data. An unprecedented $72.4 billion flowed into junk funds globally last year, according to EPFR Global.

The Bank of America Merrill Lynch U.S. High Yield Index has lost 0.06 percent this month through yesterday.