Credit Default Swaps Valuation

Understanding Decreasing CDS Curves

How did the Greek credit event impact the credit default swap market?

ABSTRACTMost studies of the short sales ban of UK financial stocks from September 2008 to January 2009 fail to control for the UK’s worst ever banking crisis and the underlying increase in risk. This paper studies the ban’s impact on the 13 large financials with credit default swaps (CDS) and 20 smaller stocks without CDS. The results reveal that returns of banned stocks Granger cause CDS returns in the pre- and post-ban periods, but causality runs from CDS to stock returns during the ban period. Underlying risk proxied by the CDS probability of default increased during the ban and the immediate pre- and post-ban periods which highlights an endogeneity problem ignored in some studies. This increased risk provides a plausible rationale for why CDS and related equity bid-ask spreads - which increased during the ban period – failed to fall significantly in the post-ban period. Panel regression results indicate that probability of default was an important economic determinant of stock bid-ask spreads during the ban period. Finally, our results suggest that the ban offered direct price support for the smaller non-CDS stocks during the ban period and indirect support for CDS stocks from their pre-ban to their post-ban levels.

Abstract. The objective of this article is theoretical and methodological justifying of determining algorithm of the cost of debt capital for enterprises functioning in emerging markets (EM). The methods of research: analysis and synthesis, system analysis, comparative analysis, empirical and statistical methods, factor analysis. Results. In this article key determinants of interest rates on debt capital for enterprises and their impact on the procedure of discount rate calculation are determined. The issue of the cost of debt calculation of enterprises in condition of absence of complete information concerning systematic and non-systematic crediting risks is studied. Differences between interest rate on the loan fixed in credit agreement and expected by creditors the cost of debt are identified. It is determined that the key factor impacting the deviation level of market value of debt capital from the nominal, and respectively, deviation of the cost of debt from the cost of capital is probability of default (PD). At the minimum values of PD, the contract interest rate corresponds to the rate of cost of debt and it is advisable to use it for discount rate calculation. Critical analysis of alternative methodological approaches of the cost of debt calculation is made. Ways of integrating of market information concerning credit default swaps into the process of expected cost of debt calculation are justified. Factors of shadowing of rates of the cost of debt and ways of reducing of shadow transactions’ level in the credit market are identified. Conclusions. At high PD values, expected by market premium for default risk may exceed the contract interest rate, which necessitates constant monitoring of credit risks and appropriate adaptation of interest rates. In the paper the algorithm of such adaptation are proposed. It is shown that in the case of non-use of interest rates adjustment taking into account changes in PD, CDS and LGD, premium for creditors’ systematic risk can differ significantly from market values of similar enterprises (peer-group), and estimated value of the cost of debt can acquire negative values. Contract (promised) interest rate should be set in such way that the premium for systematic risk of providing debt capital will be at the level of similar companies and does not change significantly as a result of probability of default changes. If in practice the opposite situation occurs, it is the evidence of contract interest rate shadowing, absence of effective system of assessment and management of credit risks. For solving the problem of interest rate transparency and filling of information gaps concerning PD borrowers in EM countries, should intensify CDS market. Keywords: debt capital, default probability, non-performing loans, credit default swap, credit spread, debt capital premium, shadow economy. JEL Classification E47 Formulas: 16; fig.: 0; tabl.: 3; bibl.: 15.

We introduce a real options model in order to quantify the moral hazard impact of credit default swap (CDS) positions on the corporate default probabilities. Moral hazard is widely addressed in the insurance literature, where the insured agent may become less cautious about preventing the risk from occurring. Importantly, with CDS the moral hazard problem may be magnified since one can buy multiple protections for the same bond. To illustrate this issue, we consider a firm with the possibility of switching from an investment to another one. An investor can influence the strategic decisions of the firm and can also trade CDS written on the firm. We analyze how the decisions of the investor influence the firm value when he is allowed to trade credit default contracts on the firm’s debt. Our model involves a time-dependent optimal stopping problem, which we study analytically and numerically, using the Longstaff–Schwartz algorithm. We identify the situations where the investor exercises the switching option with a loss, and we measure the impact on the firm’s value and firm’s default probability. Contrary to the common intuition, the investors’ optimal behavior does not systematically consist in buying CDSs and increase the default probabilities. Instead, large indifference zones exist, where no arbitrage profits can be realized. As the number of the CDSs in the position increases to exceed several times the level of a complete insurance, we enter in the zone where arbitrage profits can be made. These are obtained by implementing very aggressive strategies (i.e., increasing substantially the default probability by producing losses to the firm). The profits increase sharply as we exit the indifference zone.

Does the Onset of CDS Trading Increase Tax Avoidance?

Sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads exhibit strong co-movements across Asian countries and regions, including both emerging and developed economies. After controlling for global impacts, we examine the regional lead-lag relationships among changes in ten Asian sovereign CDS spreads. We use the pairwise Granger causality test to find that lagged changes in Kazakhstan’s sovereign CDS spreads significantly predict changes in other Asian sovereign CDS spreads. By estimating the news-diffusion model, we find evidence that this predictive relationship may be explained by information diffusion. Furthermore, we find that lagged changes in Kazakhstan’s CDS spreads have significant out-of-sample predictive power for other Asian economies, providing practical implications for sustainable investments and risk management.

The paper examines global impact of 2010 German short sale ban on sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads, volatility, and liquidity across 54 countries. We find that CDS spreads continue rising after the ban in the debt crisis region, which suggests that the short selling ban is incapable of suppressing soaring borrowing costs in these countries. However, we find that the ban helps stabilize the CDS market by reducing CDS volatility. The reduction in CDS volatility is greater in the eurozone than that in the non‐eurozone. Furthermore, we find that the CDS market liquidity has been impaired during the ban for the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) countries. In contrast, there are no dramatic changes in the market liquidity for non‐PIIGS eurozone and non‐eurozone samples. The findings suggest that the short sale ban is ineffective to reduce sovereign borrowing costs in the debt crisis region if the underlying economy has not been significantly improved.

A Framework for Extracting the Probability of Default from Listed Stock Option Prices

Credit default swaps (CDS) are derivative contracts that are widely used as tools for credit risk management. However, in recent years, concerns have been raised about whether CDS trading itself affects the credit risk of the reference entities. We use a unique, comprehensive sample covering CDS trading of 901 North American corporate issuers, between June 1997 and April 2009, to address this question. We find that the probability of both a credit rating downgrade and bankruptcy increase, with large economic magnitudes, after the inception of CDS trading. This finding is robust to controlling for the endogeneity of CDS trading. Beyond the CDS introduction effect, we show that firms with relatively larger amounts of CDS contracts outstanding, and those with relatively more no restructuring contracts than other types of CDS contracts covering restructuring, are more adversely affected by CDS trading. Moreover, the number of creditors increases after CDS trading begins, exacerbating creditor coordination failure for the resolution of financial distress.

We use Google internet search volumes to measure households’ pessimism about overall market-wide credit health in the economy and show that this “household default sentiment” is positively correlated with the credit default swap (CDS) spread level in the market. However, while household default sentiment might drive the cost of credit to some degree, either directly or indirectly through its effect on the stock market, we find the stock market’s opinion about the credit risk in the economy (default probabilities backed out from structural models) to be much more important in explaining credit spreads. The rather weak link between household sentiment and CDS spreads, meanwhile, is consistent with the almost complete absence of retail investors (households) in the institutional investor-dominated credit derivatives market. The results are essentially the same, whether we look at market-wide CDS indexes or single-name CDS contracts, and whether we exclude the financial crisis or not.

This paper investigates the multifractal behavior of the probability of default (PD) of real sector firms and Turkey sovereign credit default swap (CDS). Moreover, we emphasize the co-movements of Hölder exponents during the financial crisis periods. For this reason, first, it is necessary to figure out the default probabilities of real sector firms. The default probability is evaluated weekly by the methodology of Moody’s Analytics, which is a commonly used approach, in which the market value of a firm is a call option written on its total assets. Multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA), multifractal detrended cross-correlation analysis (MF-DCCA) and multifractal detrended moving average cross-correlation analysis (MF-X-DMA) techniques are applied to identify the multifractal behavior of the large-scale fluctuations of PDs and CDSs. In this way, we can evaluate the local Hurst exponents. Besides, the oscillation method is employed to estimate the pointwise and local Hölder exponents. In the period between January 2001 and March 2018, the structure of dynamic co-movements of Hölder exponents is determined by applying wavelet coherency methodology and the relations in crisis period are revealed. The selected period covers the crises with structural differences: Turkey banking crisis, the US sub-prime mortgage crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis that occurred in 2001, 2008 and 2009, respectively. Besides, during the periods of financial crises, among the local Hölder exponents, severely correlated large scales show multifractal features, and hence vector fractionally autoregressive integrated moving average (VFARIMA) forecasting provides better results than scalar models.

Credit Risk and Risk Neutral Default Probabilities: Information About Rating Migrations and Defaults

In times of distress when a country loses access to markets, there is evidence that credit default swap (CDS) spreads are a leading indicator for sovereign risk than the EMBI+ sub-index for the country. However, it is not easy to discern the variables that determine the level of CDS spreads in Emerging Markets (EM); traders only quote the CDS spreads and not the inputs that are required to calculate such spreads. This note provides some evidence from Argentina and Brazil that reveals inconsistency between theory and practice in pricing CDS spreads in EM. This note suggests an alternate methodology that links CTD (cheapest-to-deliver) bonds to recovery values assumed in CDS contracts. Furthermore, special features that pertain to CDS contracts (repo specialness, short squeezes by central banks) may also magnify the financial distress of a sovereign.

Measuring Abnormal Credit Default Swap Spreads