Stocks fall, debt burden worsens for oil firms

Stocks fell again on Wednesday.

The S&P 500 fell 0.8 percent, pushing the index into negative territory for the year.

Reports of a possible merger between DuPont and Dow Chemical helped the energy sector rise 1.3 percent on Wednesday but there is little doubt that the sector as a whole remains under distress.

From Bloomberg:

As crude plunged to the lowest in more than six years, the average yield on the debt of speculative-grade oil and gas borrowers climbed to 13.4 percent, the highest since the waning days of the global financial crisis in 2009 and the widest divergence ever relative to the broader U.S. junk bond market, Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show. That’s likely to push more companies to ask their bondholders to restructure debt to avoid bankruptcy, according to corporate-turnaround adviser Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP.