Improving credit quality and decreasing spreads

The factors that drive the widening and the tightening of the basis are explained below:

Factors that pull protection tighter (negative basis):

  • Strong demand from protection sellers because of the unfunded nature of CDS and a lack of desired exposure/liquidity in the debt market.
  • Synthetic CDOs can drive default swap spreads tighter because the manager needs to sell protection in order to buy synthetic credit risk into these structures.
  • The existence of a default swap curve in 1, 3, 5 and 10 years can offer investors a broader range of maturities to construct a better portfolio.
  • Assets trading above par, that is, the protection seller is exposed to a lower amount than the cash investor.
  • Improving credit quality and decreasing spreads/basis volatility (CDS _ high beta instrument).

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