July 2023

It won’t take a recession to cause a wave of defaults. And Wall Street has yet to fully price in that distress. That was the view from BlackRock’s Amanda Lynam on Surveillance this morning. She joined a slew of recent guests in flagging concerns around some riskier credit valuations — and reminding us of the

Richard Cooper’s phone is something of an early alarm bell for the global economy. Lately, it’s been ringing a lot. A partner at Cleary Gottlieb, a top law firm for corporate bankruptcies, he’s advised businesses worldwide for decades on what to do when they’re drowning in debt. He did it through the global financial crisis,

Corners of the consumer and corporate market are beginning to feel the pain from the Federal Reserve’s ultra-aggressive rate hikes, even though broader macroeconomic indicators are still showing signs of strength, says Apollo’s Torsten Slok. “A default cycle has started,” the chief economist told Bloomberg TV Thursday, pointing to rising delinquency rates for auto loans

Weekly data for corporate bankruptcy filings has started to meaningfully deteriorate in recent weeks, see chart below. The faster speed of slowing in the weekly data is not consistent with the gradual rise in the monthly default rates seen in HY, IG, and loans. Continue reading here.