Day: November 28, 2008

Credit Default Swaps, Herald of Doom (for Beginners)

No, this isn’t another article about how credit default swaps (CDS) have ruined or are going to ruin the economy. It’s about one of the nice side benefits of CDS: the habit they have of pointing out who is going to get into trouble next. And it has pretty Bloomberg charts!

As everyone probably knows by know, a CDS is insurance against default on a bond or bond-like security. If you think about it for a while, you will realize that this means the price of the CDS reflects the market expectation that the issuer will default.

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