Peter Tchir, global head of macro.....>

US CORPORATES: Peter Tchir, global head of macro strategy at Brean Capital, said

his "favorite long positions in investment grade bonds" are "longer dated bonds

of companies that have large overseas cash and have been issuing bonds to buy

back stock." He cited "Oracle as an example of what has been going on with their

balance sheets for the past 5 years, and why I am comfortable heavily

overweighting bonds of these companies." 

- Tchir likes in investment grade bonds, "companies that have large off-shore

cash," citing "Oracle as a case study (purely to illustrate my pt - I am not

making any comments on the company, management, forward looking, prospects, etc.

- this is strictly an example of the phenomenon that has been occurring)."

- He said "back in 2012, Oracle had less than $15B of debt and over $30B of cash

and short term investments, or 'excess' cash of over $16.5B. That shrunk to less

than $4 billion of 'excess' cash at the start of 2017.

- "Currently Oracle has $67B of cash and short-term investments and $53B of

total debt (all data as calculated by Bloomberg)," he added. "It seems as though

in the past few yrs, the 'excess' cash has peaked in Q3 and reduced in Q4."