Traditional high-yield investors say cross-over interest is spiking for these deals at the moment, while the investment-grade market is setting its own low coupon records -- thus luring investors into moving down the credit spectrum in search of yield.

"There is very strong appetite for Double B credits," said James Lee, senior analyst at Calvert. "Cross-over investors are really soaking up a lot of this stuff and forcing pricing way down."

Last week, Videotron and Virgin Media, two issuers in the technology, media and telecommunications sector, priced Double B rated deals with 5% and 5.25% coupons respectively. These were the lowest coupons on record for that sector in the high-yield space, according to Thomson Reuters data.

On Monday, Fidelity National Information Services and Continental Resources both priced their Double B rated deals at 5% at par. Bombardier, the aircraft manufacturer, sold US$500m in Ba2/BB+ rated 10-year senior notes at 5.75% - a full 200bp tighter than the company's existing March 2010 10-year notes.

In all, seven new deals were launched and priced on what was the busiest Monday in recent memory -- and more than USD7.5bn was issued in the first few days of March.

While the heavy deal flow on Monday was overwhelming, especially as it was combined with a weaker secondary market, bankers say the performance was not predictive of the market going forward.

"The fundamentals and technicals in high-yield are still very strong and there is plenty of cash still in the market," said one syndicate manager.

"When you have a bulge of activity, sometimes the secondary will trade off because of all of the calendar pressure. We were hoping that wouldn't happen, but it did."

To be sure, March is still expected to be a very busy month for opportunistic issuance, especially as companies come off of their earnings blackout periods and rates remain attractively low.

"Issuers are finding market conditions to be as attractive or more attractive than in April 2011, and are looking to term out maturities and raise general corporate purpose money because these windows rarely open," said the syndicate manager.

The average option adjusted spread was quoted at 584bp on Monday, according to the Barclays Capital high-yield index -- about 100bp lower than at the start of the year.

The average yield to worst was 7.09% on Monday, having dipped to 6.99% last Wednesday. The last time the average yield to worst was quoted below 7% was in June of last year.

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