The difficulty of defining a default

It’s not difficult to see why the market is so taken with credit default swaps. For the protection buyer, they are a quick and easy way for investors worried about a particular credit risk – whether originally taken on via bonds, loans, trade notes, or derivative counterparty exposure – to gain reassurance without having to dispose of assets. For sellers of protection, default swaps provide the opportunity to buy into sectors to which they may have little or no exposure, while avoiding the need to make a large capital investment up front.