Cessation of activity mid-December is an opportunity to switch off… and let the mind wander
Welshcake is grateful for a lull in credit markets. The downtime has inspired him to dream up a CLO play

I foresee various spooky spectacles hitting our screens - and your long portfolios
Welshcake is settling in for a horror movie marathon. But in the previews he sees monsters lurking behind tight credit spreads

CLO collateral managers who are able to update their documents could gain warf advantage
Moody’s is reviewing its approach to warf. Changes could boost managers’ ability to trade

Questions will need answering about where a manager's fiduciary responsibility lies
A university lecturer gives Welshcake a shock with a CLO presentation that points to shady trading games

Past returns: Bravo! Citi takes applause with CSO portfolios
Five years ago in Creditflux we reported that Citi was planning a follow up to its Bravo portfolio — a CSO reference entity in which the bank made two-way markets

They said it: "Clearing houses have proposed they will clear index tranches next year"
More liquidity for the index tranche market

Gaining exposure to US IG credit through the index means giving up about 10% of potential value
A bespoke portfolio of IG credits can take advantage of the skew between indices and single names

They should have followed Revlon's Double Twist mascara slogan of 2009: "It's worth a double take"
Blockchain might not eradicate all problems in credit, but it should reduce human error

The length of a CLO’s reinvestment period has no substantive effect on its resilience to defaults
Three-year reinvestment CLOs are the norm, but debt investors should be locking in historically wide spreads for longer

They said it: "We’re going to change the world of finance"
Big ambitions in blockchain

Points up front: From drafting CLO docs to writing crime thrillers
Nicola Bashforth, a popular figure in the CLO business, announced last month that she had left the industry to return to Lancashire in England and try her hand at writing novels

Points up front: How much do I owe you?
Payment systems in the credit industry had a bad August

The surge in index tranche trading has resulted in a deep, liquid and nuanced set of market dynamics
Welshcake emerges from his bunker to find CLOs still standing and the CSO market getting back to business

They said it: "Imagine a garden party and all of a sudden a big wasp shows up"
On Creditflux’s US CLO webinar last month, Napier Park’s head of US CLO investments Serhan Secmen described the March sell-off as a garden party

Points up front: Introducing Downton Flux

During last month’s broadcast of the Creditflux Manager of the Year, we were inundated with messages of congratulations for the award winners via a live feed...

If you’re not finding black talent, you’re not trying hard enough
In the past few weeks, it has been easy to put up our billboards and tweet our condemnation of the treatment of black people. Now we need to change the way companies work

It takes just a few CLO collateral managers selling into the distressed community to start cracks forming
It is becoming increasingly clear that CLO collateral managers need to improve their collaboration efforts in distressed situations

They said it: Can I be a bond investor and invest in Netflix?
The response of a loan portfolio manager after we asked where should loan investors park their cash?

Points up front: Channelling Twain, Agent Smith and Mike Tyson
Lockdown can adversely affect one’s grasp of reality, and for credit portfolio managers this has manifested itself in a penchant for quoting famous (sometimes fictional) figures

Some managers calculated their CLOs were passing OC tests, only to find them failing the next day
Corporate credit downgrade storms have been weathered before, but this one has come out of season

There will surely be jewels in the high yield dung heap, but the risk-reward is more compelling in IG
Whatever the long-term effects of the pandemic, one thing stays the same: IG looks attractive

They said it: There will be a re-tiering of managers after this
"There will be a re-tiering of managers after this"

I take strength from the composure investors have shown when told their payments are being deferred
It’s tempting to head to the beach or grab a CLO distribution, but investing is all about playing the long game

Where are the gloating I-told-you-so columnists who claimed CLOs would bring global destruction?
We have seen a measured response to the coronavirus crisis: fund managers aren’t collapsing and investors are not shunning CLOs