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IFR Outlook for US Credit Roundtable 2015

IFR’s US Credit Roundtable took place on October 29, the day after the October FOMC meeting and immediately following an IFR roundtable that had explored the Fed’s thinking and room for manoeuvre, and focused more specifically on the US Treasury market.

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IFR Outlook for US Credit Roundtable 2015: Participants

Hans Mikkelsen BofA Merrill Lynch Hans Mikkelsen is head of US investment-grade credit strategy at BofAML Global Research. He formulates US macro and high-grade credit strategy, providing relative value strategy research across cash and derivatives markets. Peter Aherne Citigroup Peter Aherne is head of North America investment-grade capital markets syndicate and new products at Citigroup, responsible for the origination and execution of US dollar transactions for global corporations and financial institutions. He also oversees syndication...

IFR Outlook for US Credit Roundtable 2015: Part 1

IFR: Welcome to IFR’s US Credit Roundtable. We’re going to be exploring the themes, trends and drivers at play in the US primary and secondary US credit markets. I wanted to start with the impact of what’s happening in the US rates market and with US Treasuries. In terms of the direct impact of the themes and the anxieties that reside in the rates world, to what extent have those transmuted themselves into the credit world and to what extent are the issues that drive credit sentiment more idiosyncratic? Dan Sorid, Deutsche Bank: The impact of...

IFR Outlook for US Credit Roundtable 2015: Part 2

IFR: Dan, this notion of credit trading on technicals rather than fundamentals, what’s going to make that behaviour shift back to fundamentals? The default statistics have been fairly benign but people are starting to point to a corporate earnings recession. It sounds to me like this could be storing up trouble for the future. Dan Sorid, Deutsche Bank: Anecdotally, strategists like Hans and myself use ex-energy indices right now because the energy sector has performed very poorly. Then we’ve had to exclude the materials sector because it’s...

IFR Outlook for US Credit Roundtable 2015: Part 3

IFR: Dan, if we move into a rate-tightening cycle, what mitigants might there be to any volatility that emerges in the credit space? What are your concerns about the credit asset class in a rate-tightening cycle? Dan Sorid, Deutsche Bank: There are so many variables and it depends really on what the Fed does and what the conditions are under which they do them. I would say that the most important factor for credit today, assuming that conditions are strong enough for them to hike, is whether the emerging market economies see some kind of...