CLOs Sell at Frantic Pace as Investors Prepare for Loan Bargains

Debt fund managers are raising money cheaply now in the hopes of finding bargain leveraged loans to pounce on in the future.

Investment firms sold more than $320 billion of bonds backed by loans this year through mid-August, a record volume, according to a note from JPMorgan Chase & Co. Sales of the securities, known as collateralized loan obligations, kept coming later in the month even as most other debt offerings slowed to a crawl.

All the new CLO creation is translating into nearly bottomless demand for leveraged loans, a type of debt that private equity firms and other buyers ...