The new year brings a flood of hopes, dreams, wishes and expectations. For those whose job it is to predict which of these will materialize and which will not it is time to step up to the fence, swing a leg over and get comfortable.
Credit analysts are the soothsayers of the financial world and as such it is their task to tell the rest of us what’s going to happen over the coming months. Unfortunately, with capital markets being the mercurial, organic entities that they are, this is practically impossible. Generally what can happen will, and what one thinks will happen won’t. Unless it does.
Consequently, analysts’ reports are of necessity fairly murky. No one likes to be proved wrong, and most predictions will be somewhat qualified. Pick of the bunch this year is a quote from the credit outlook report published by Swiss bank UBS. It reads: “Global credit spreads are tight and will likely stay tight as long as our forecast for a global soft landing proves true and global liquidity doesn’t suddenly evaporate.”
So as long as all the stuff that will keep spreads tight doesn’t change, then all things being equal and barring any unforeseen circumstances we can expect spreads to remain relatively tight.