Data as of Aug 21, 2026.

These are loans to companies the market considers likely enough to miss a payment that it demands a premium for lending. The premium is not a discount on quality — it is the quoted price of that risk.

Three things to know before you read a number in this table. Each row is a published series, not a bond for sale — several of these are averages across hundreds of bonds, and an average is not a price anyone will fill you at. The Basis column says what each row measures, and rows measured differently are not comparable with one another however close the numbers look. And the Observed column dates the reading: NOT CURRENT means the publisher is overdue and the figure shown is the last one they released, not today's. The note under the table says which rows belong to this category and which are here only as a benchmark to measure it against.

ICE BofA high-yield index effective yields by rating bucket (via FRED), the high-yield option-adjusted spread — percentage points, not a rate — and the investment-grade index yield for contrast. The gap between the CCC bucket and the BB bucket is the market's view on how much distress it is being asked to fund. All of these are index averages; the yield on any single below-investment-grade bond can be far from them.

Why this section sits between the rates and the risks rather than at the end: two bonds quoting the same number do not pay you the same amount. Bond interest is generally taxed as ordinary income federally, at your own marginal rate, and what differs between the families is whether your state also taxes it and whether any federal exemption applies. A headline yield is a before-tax figure everywhere on this site, so the comparison that matters to you is the one made after the paragraphs below.

A fund is how most people end up owning this category, and it is not the same instrument as the bonds inside it. The yield column here counts the cash already paid out over the last year against today's share price, so it describes what has happened rather than what the holdings are contracted to earn — the two can differ by a wide margin in either direction. The other difference is the one people notice late: an individual bond has a date on which it repays, and a fund does not. It keeps selling and rebuying, so there is no maturity to wait for if the price falls.

Most people arrive at bonds expecting the only question to be whether the borrower pays. The list below is the answer to a different question: the ways the money shrinks while every payment arrives exactly on schedule. Prices fall when new bonds pay more than yours, inflation can outrun a fixed payment, and a borrower who repays early hands the cash back at the worst moment to reinvest it. Read these before the yield, not after it.

• Default and recoveryThe central risk. Defaults cluster in recessions rather than arriving evenly, and recovery on unsecured high-yield debt is a fraction of par, settled years later.
• Spread wideningYou lose money long before any default. When the market reprices credit risk, every high-yield bond marks down at once, including the ones that will pay in full.
• Call riskImprove the credit and the issuer refinances. You are repaid at the call price precisely when the bond had become the good holding you wanted to keep.
• LiquidityThe market thins out exactly when everyone wants out. An ETF trades every second; the bonds inside it may not trade for days, which is why fund prices can gap in stress.
• Equity-like behaviourIn a downturn high yield tends to fall with stocks rather than cushion them. It is not a substitute for the government bonds people hold for ballast.
• Reaching for yieldSorting the market by yield sorts it by perceived distress. The highest quoted yields belong to the bonds least likely to pay them.