Turbulent week meets projections; tone weighs on coming week's supply; Agilent notes weaken

By Aleesia Forni and Andrea Heisinger

New York, June 21 - A volatile week ended on Friday with no new deals - a sharp contrast to how the week began.

About $12.4 billion of new corporate supply was seen in the market for the week, which was within the $10 billion to $15 billion projection.

Nearly half of that weekly sum was from a $6 billion trade done Monday by Chevron Corp. The company came to the market opportunistically, and to refinance a portion of commercial paper, ahead of an announcement at the conclusion of a two-day Federal Reserve meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday.

In comments made after that meeting, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke roiled the markets when he signaled that quantitative easing efforts such as bond buying and keeping key interest rates near zero would be scaled back later this year, provided economic signifiers such as unemployment had improved to certain levels.

As for the coming week, about $10 billion is expected, depending on what the market looks like.

"Obviously, we're going to have to see if any news comes out over the weekend and if it's a constructive tone," a syndicate source said.

"It's been really turbulent, so you just never know."

The secondary market opened with a positive tone, a trader said early during the session, though spreads moved wider as the day wore on.

The Markit CDX North American Investment Grade index was 3 basis points wider at a spread of 94 bps at Friday's close.

The trader quoted Agilent Technologies, Inc.'s recent deal 3 bps wider at 196 bps bid, 191 bps offered.

Agilent's $600 million of 3.875% 10-year senior notes were sold at a spread of Treasuries plus 175 bps on Tuesday.

The bioanalytic and electronic measurement technology company is based in Santa Clara, Calif.

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