JP Morgan Chase launches Credit Navigator for relative-value credit trading

JP Morgan Chase has launched its Credit Navigator product, an analytical tool designed to identify relative-value opportunities in the credit markets.

Credit Navigator provides data for more than 50 European and US credits, enabling investors to identify relative-value opportunities in the credit markets. The product offers an asset universe and basis history chart for each name, comprising the credit default swap curve, true asset swap spreads for all liquid bonds and a three-month basis history of these bonds.

The complete six-month basis history of each bond is also displayed. This data offering enables users to judge the absolute and relative value of a bond versus other bonds, as well as versus credit default swaps, and has already been used by JP Morgan Chase’s credit research team. The bank said it anticipated interest in Credit Navigator from a broad user base, ranging from hedge funds and proprietary trading desks that actively trade the bond/credit default swap basis, credit default swap forwards and debt/equity, to real money investors looking for relative value opportunities. JP Morgan Chase said issuers seeking an overview of how their name trades in the market across different formats and currencies had also expressed an interest in the service.

Credit Navigator was created in response to the increasing integration of the credit markets, with more market makers and investors aggregating credit risk trading activities across different credit products into a single risk management system, the US bank said.

“Credit Navigator is an important step towards increasing transparency in the credit derivatives and corporate bond markets, and a crucial tool for identifying relative-value and basis-trading opportunities,” said Marcus Schüler, co-head of JP Morgan Chase’s flow credit derivatives marketing business in Europe.