Investors are increasingly focused on gauging the risks related to climate change. We investigated how various climate scenarios could impact the credit risk of portfolios. In one scenario, 16% of investment-grade issuers could migrate to high yield.

Credit investors use spreads to compare relative value and risk. Studies of emerging-market sovereign debt have shown that credit-default swaps tended to be a better measure of value than spreads computed from bonds. But is it still the case?

Since the global financial crisis, many have expressed concern about the health and future of credit-default swaps. Could institutional investors find the liquidity they need to hedge credit risk in subsequent periods? We examine CDS liquidity during the COVID-19 crisis.

In times of heightened volatility, risk limits can protect against equity-market drawdowns. While such measures can dampen portfolio losses, they may also have an impact on long-term returns, particularly in case of a sharp V-shaped market recovery.

As the COVID-19 crisis unfolded, credit markets deteriorated under the stress of a sharply diminished economic outlook. We analyze three indicators of credit-market conditions: default risk, relative value and contagion risk.

In the recent market meltdown, some fixed-income ETFs traded at discounts as high as 6% to net asset values, a level not seen since 2008. Could ETF prices deviate from the value of the underlying portfolio during market stress and leave investors exposed to losses on top of the falling bond prices?

In the fourth quarter of 2018, redemptions of high-yield ETFs soared to approximately 25% of these funds’ assets under management (AUM), according to data provider IHS Markit.