How to Monitor Junk Bond Spreads?

C

Cdntrader

How to Monitor Junk Bond Spreads over treasuries?

I don't imagine there are any indices or etfs? any benchmark bonds I can monitor? seems to me there's a corp bond etf.


I see IB TWS has alot of symbols for bonds.


Any other ideas?
 
standardandpoors.com has composite spread indices for investment grade and speculative grade.

It's located at standardandpoors.com, click on Indices -> S&P Alternative Indices -> S&P Composite Spreads -> Data.

This might be what you're looking for.
 
Just charted the spreads going back to 2003. Interesting that since then junk spreads have dropped from over 800bps to around 300bps these days. Gotta think with all the talk about liquidity drying up there'll be a lot of pressure on spreads - particularly the lower quality credits.

I know CBOT just introduced a CDS index contract, anybody trading that contract?
 
Cool, I had no idea these ETFs even existed. Gives the retail investor lots of options. What do you think about the IEI - HYG spread nazz? The IEI and TLT both invest in Treasuries, but the IEI duration is closer to the HYG duration.
 
You can do different types of quality and duration stuff with those ETF's. Go to the iShares website to find out the other ticker symbols.
 
Quote from nazzdack:

You can do different types of quality and duration stuff with those ETF's. Go to the iShares website to find out the other ticker symbols.
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You're an acutely smart guy. Often.
 
Just a note: you should probably consider looking spread over swap rather than T. in that case, HY went from about 260bps to about 325bps or so in the last two weeks.
 
sjfan - that's a good point I never really considered the spread vs. swaps. This should be a quiet week - gives me some time to go through some data and think about all the different strategies I can play around with.

Just out of curiousity, anyone here have a position (or strong opinion) on credit spreads?
 
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