This is an overview of the U.S. high yield corporate bond market, in which we compare the spread and default rate levels since 1990. The high yield bond market is made up of those bonds that are rated below investment grade (IG) by ratings agencies and therefore tend to be more volatile, but also offer higher yields than IG to investors. Special attention is paid to the energy sector of the high yield bond market as it has tended to have a high weighting in the index. With the energy sector is heavily dependent on certain commodities, moves in the energy sector may not fully reflect the behavior of the rest of the high yield market, as we can see that historically it has higher default rates and spreads compared to the broad index. Higher spreads and defaults tend to happen close to each other and could represent issues in the high yield space. An interesting note is that spreads appear to move higher slightly before defaults begin to pick up. While spreads have moved just above its 10-year average, defaults are still below 10-year average, suggesting that the high yield market is yet to come under pressure.