Yankee Market

"Yankee market" is another one name for the US stock market. The term "Yankee market" is commonly applied by non-U.S. citizens and has a slang connotation for an American.

More about “Yankee Market”

Other markets in the world also have slang names, similar to "Yankee market". For example, the Japanese market is called the “samurai market”, and the UK market is called the “bulldog market”.

Another concept closely related to the term “Yankee market” is a Yankee bond, which is a debt obligation issued by a foreign bank, but denominated in the US dollars and traded in the USA. A tranche, that is, a share of any payment amount transferred in the form of one portion, is a very common form of issuing Yankee bonds. Tranches may vary in terms of risk, interest rate, or maturity.

These financial proposals in the “Yankee market” can reach amounts of $1 billion. In addition to the fact that the issuance of such bonds in the United States is very strictly regulated, this process also includes an assessment of the issuer's creditworthiness by a reputable rating agency. Since the issuance, together with the approval, can take more than three months, the process of selling these bonds in the “Yankee market” can also be quite slow. 

Special considerations

The terms “reverse Yankee market” and “reverse Yankee bond” are used to refer to US businesses taking part in the Euro bond market, and it is considered a fairly common issue of bonds by US companies in Europe. The volume of the reverse “Yankee market” is about 380 billion euros.

Companies from the USA offer and trade large amounts of euro-denominated bonds to reflect monetary policy divergence. US bond returns are considered to be higher than Eurozone returns, and the sale of Reverse Yankees bonds in the reverse “Yankee market” by numerous corporations allows fixing lower borrowing costs.

Big US issuers making billions of dollars in trades showed that reverse “Yankee market” trades are quite popular. For example, raising over 8 billion euros in 5 tranches was one of Coca-Cola’s biggest deals in 2015. Such big names as Nestle, AT&T, Apple, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Netflix, and others have also been involved in reverse Yankee deals.