, Columnist
Energy Gets Its Junk Back On
Investors should take cues from Wall Street before rushing back in.
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Last year's junk-bond sell-off seemed scary for a moment. Losses accelerated, funds collapsed, defaults mounted.
But something remarkable happened on the way to a destabilizing rout: Oil prices stabilized and investors piled back into the notes they had just abandoned. Everything was suddenly just fine again (with the exception of a few companies and investors that got annihilated along the way).