Back to basics

We take you back to the credit basics to review everything you thought you already knew but were too afraid to ask... In the second of a two-part series on credit derivatives, Saul Doctor, analyst at JPMorgan in London, discusses next-level CDS

The huge growth in volume and liquidity of simple credit derivative products such as credit default swaps has facilitated the introduction of more advanced products, which are in some cases more liquid than the underlying CDS they are based on. These products can be broadly divided into two parts: index-based products and other products.

CDS can be pooled together to form an index of CDS, which provides broad market exposure to CDS. The most common indices are iTraxx Europe and CDX North America