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Report
Did liquidity providers become liquidity seekers?
The misalignment between corporate bond and credit default swap (CDS) spreads (i.e., CDS-fbond basis) during the 2007-09 financial crisis is often attributed to corporate bond dealers shedding off their inventory, right when liquidity was scarce. This paper documents evidence against this widespread perception. In the months following Lehman?s collapse, dealers, including proprietary trading desks in investment banks, provided liquidity in response to the large selling by clients. Corporate bond inventory of dealers rose sharply as a result. Although providing liquidity, limits to arbitrage, ...
Working Paper
Identifying Contagion in a Banking Network
We present the first micro-level evidence of the transmission of shocks through financial networks. Using the network of credit default swap (CDS) transactions between banks, we identify bank CDS returns attributable to counterparty losses. A bank's own CDS spread increases whenever counterparties from whom it has purchased default protection themselves experience losses. We find no such effect from losses of non-counterparties, nor from counterparties to whom the bank has sold protection. The effect on bank CDS returns through this counterparty loss channel is large relative to the direct ...
Journal Article
CDS Auctions: An Overview
We discuss the historical background of the credit default swap (CDS) market, why CDS auctions were developed, and the most recent literature. We describe the auction rules using the Toys R Us auction as an example. Furthermore, we discuss the theoretical and empirical results presented in Chernov et al. (2013). Empirically, we extend their data to include more recent CDS auctions. Our results support their findings that dealers have incentive to manipulate the auction price downward when the net open interest is positive. Finally, we use novel dealer-level CDS positions to support Chernov et ...
Report
CDS and equity market reactions to stock issuances in the U.S. financial industry: evidence from the 2002-13 period
We study seasoned equity issuances by financial and nonfinancial companies between 2002 and 2013. To assess the risk and valuation implications of these issuances, we conduct an event-study analysis using daily credit default swap (CDS) and stock market pricing data. The major findings of the paper are that equity prices do not react to new issues in the pre-crisis period, but react negatively in the crisis. CDS prices respond to new, default-relevant information. Over the full sample period, cumulative abnormal CDS spreads drop in response to equity issuance announcements. The reactions are ...
Working Paper
Counterparty Risk and Counterparty Choice in the Credit Default Swap Market
We investigate how market participants price and manage counterparty risk in the post-crisis period using confidential trade repository data on single-name credit default swap (CDS) transactions. We find that counterparty risk has a modest impact on the pricing of CDS contracts, but a large impact on the choice of counterparties. We show that market participants are significantly less likely to trade with counterparties whose credit risk is highly correlated with the credit risk of the reference entities and with counterparties whose credit quality is relatively low. Furthermore, we examine ...
Working Paper
Mixed Signals: Investment Distortions with Adverse Selection
We study how adverse selection distorts equilibrium investment allocations in a Walrasian credit market with two-sided heterogeneity. Representative investor and partial equilibrium economies are special cases where investment allocations are distorted above perfect information allocations. By contrast, the general setting features a pecuniary externality that leads to trade and investment allocations below perfect information levels. The degree of heterogeneity between informed agents' type governs the direction of the distortion. Moreover, contracts that complete markets dampen the impact ...
Working Paper
Half-full or Half-empty? Financial Institutions, CDS Use, and Corporate Credit Risk
We construct a novel U.S. data set that matches bank holding company credit default swap (CDS) positions to detailed U.S. credit registry data containing both loan and corporate bond holdings to study the effects of banks' CDS use on corporate credit quality. Banks may use CDS to mitigate agency frictions and not renegotiate loans with solvent but illiquid borrowers resulting in poorer measures of credit risk. Alternatively, banks may lay off the credit risk of high quality borrowers through the CDS market to comply with risk-based capital requirements, which does not impact corporate credit ...
Working Paper
Credit Default Swaps
Credit default swaps (CDS) are the most common type of credit derivative. This paper provides a brief history of the CDS market and discusses its main characteristics. After describing the basic mechanics of a CDS, I present a simple valuation framework that focuses on the relationship between conditions in the cash and CDS markets as well as an approach to mark to market existing CDS positions. The discussion highlights how the 2008 global financial crisis helped shape current practices and conventions in the CDS market, including the widespread adoption of standardized coupons and upfront ...
Working Paper
Are the Borrowing Costs of Large Financial Firms Unusual?
Estimates of investor expectations of government support of large financial firms are often based on large financial firms' lower borrowing costs relative to smaller financial firms. Using pricing data on credit default swaps (CDS) and corporate bonds over the period 2004 to 2013, however, we find that the CDS and bond spreads of financial firms are no more sensitive to borrower size than the spreads of non-financial firms. Outside of the financial crisis period, spreads are more sensitive to borrower size in several non-financial industries. We find that size-related differences in spreads ...
Journal Article
Over-the-counter swaps – before and after reform
Now that the main elements of the new regulations can be described, let?s see how a simplified trade would be typically carried out by a fictional set of institutions both before and after the reform.3 First Bank is a large dealer bank that buys and sells securities and derivatives. High Yield (HY) is a mutual fund that has a large portfolio of junk bonds. HY wants to hedge against the risk of a downturn in the junk bond market.