Credit spreads derivatives

Credit spread derivatives are forwards and options that reflect views on the credit spread movements of underlying credit assets. Therefore,... 

Central banks and market practitioners use interest rates prevailing in the government bond market to extract certain information, the most important of which is implied forward rates. These are an estimate of the market s expectations about the future directirMi of short-term interest rates. They are important because they signify the market s expectafirMis about the future path of interest rates however, they are also used in derivative pricing and to create synthetic bond prices from the extent of credit spreads of corporate bonds. 

In Chapter 8, we described several models to measure the term structure of credit spread and we introduced the model proposed by Longstaff and Schwartz (1995) for pricing fixed-rate debt. The authors propose also a model to valuing floating-rate notes. The equation derived for pricing floating-rate bonds is given by (10.2) ... 

Various credit derivatives may be priced using this model for example, credit default swaps, total return swaps, and credit spread options. The pricing of these products requires the generation of the appropriate credit dependent cash flows at each node on a lattice of possible outcomes. The fair value may be determined by discounting the probability-weighted cash flows. The probability of the outcomes would be determined by reference to the risk neutral transition matrix. 

The pricing of credit derivatives that pay out according to the level of the credit spread would require that the credit spread process is adequately modeled. In order to achieve this, a stochastic process for the distribution of outcomes for the credit spread is an important consideration. 

Credit spread products are a rapidly growing class of credit derivative. The spread in the following sections relate to a credit spread over a benchmark security. However, the traded credit spread could also refer to the CDS spread. 

For more detail on modeling credit spreads to price credit derivatives, see Choudhry (2004). 

If this difference is positive we have a positive basis, and it happens when credit derivates trade at higher prices than asset swaps. Otherwise, if the difference is negative we have a negative basis. Consider the following example of a positive basis trade for HERIM and TKAAV. For both bonds, we calculate the CDS spread which is equal to 86.3 for HERIM and equal to 88.6 for TKAAV. The CDS basis over the ASW spread determined before is equal to 46.8 for HERIM and equal to 49.5 for TKAAV. However, the basis illustrated in Figure 1.6 is different because CRVD measures them relative to the Z-spread, which is 50.7 for HERIM and 48 for TKAAV. The basis relative to the Z-spread is equal to 35.6 for HERIM and 40.6 for TKAAV. So, we note that either the ASW spread or the Z-spread can be used as the basis performance, giving a similar result and positive basis in both cases. 

An interesting development in the credit default swap market is the response of protection sellers to credit events, the impact is ultimately reflected in the price of credit default swaps, as reflected by the credit default swap spread. Credit derivative markets have experienced spread widening at times of bad credit related news, in effect this reflects the protection sellers pricing the risk of the additional probability of a credit event into the protection they sell. 

Asset swaps are used to alter the cash flow profile of a bond. The asset swap market is an important segment of the credit derivatives market since it explicitly sets out the price of credit as a spread over LIBOR. Pricing a bond by reference to LIBOR is commonly used and the spread over LIBOR is a measure of credit risk in the cash flow of the underlying... 

In practice, the spread information from the CDS market is used to imply the probability of default and the hazard rate for the underlying reference entity. The recovery rate is an input when the calculation of implied probabilities takes place. It is common to assume a recovery rate that reflects the rate on the cheapest to deliver deliverable obligation. Credit derivative traders will monitor the prices of the cheapest to deliver bonds (i.e., deliverable obligations with the lowest recovery), when constructing hedges. 

Practitioners increasingly model credit risk as they do interest rates and use spread models to price associated derivatives. One such model is the Heath-Jarrow-Morton (HJM) model described in chapter 4. This analyzes interest rate risk, default risk, and recovery risk—that is, the rate of recovery on a defaulted loan, which is always assumed to retain some residual value. 

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