Andrew Sheets: Optimism in Corporate Credit

Corporate credit continues to outperform other class assets, due in part to U.S. economic growth in the third quarter.

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Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Global Head of Corporate Credit Research for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about trends across the global investment landscape and how we put those ideas together. It's Friday, October 27, at 2 p.m. in London. 

Credit has a reputation of being the scouts of financial markets, sniffing out and detecting danger well ahead of others. In 2000, 2007 and 2011, to name a few, credit markets started to weaken well before other asset classes in flagging danger. The Federal Reserve used credit spreads as one of their most important measures of financial stress.

While we’d like to think that this is because credit investors are smarter than their peers, a more realistic answer lies in the nature of the asset class. Because credit offers a generally limited premium if things go right, relative to larger losses if things go wrong, credit investors are often incentivized to price in a rising probability of danger early. 

And so it's notable that amidst the current market weakness, credit is pretty well behaved, with benchmark spreads on U.S. investment grade credit roughly unchanged since October 3rd. Credit is very much a passenger, not a driver, of the proverbial financial market bus that in recent weeks has been swaying back and forth. 

We think credit continues to be a relative outperformer across assets, and for that to be true, two things need to continue. 

First, credit is very sensitive to the likelihood of a deep recession. Recent data has been good, with the U.S. economy growing a whopping 4.9% in the third quarter. While our US economists expect slower growth in the fourth quarter, we think a generally stronger than expected U.S. economic story has, and should continue to be, helpful to corporate credit. 

Second, credit has managed to avoid some of the bigger headaches surrounding other asset classes. Credit valuations are less expensive and closer to average than U.S. equity markets. Credit is less sensitive to volatile interest rates and enjoys a more stable base of demand than U.S. mortgages. And the outlook for future supply in corporate bonds looks lower than, say, U.S. Treasury bonds, as companies are starting to react to higher rates by borrowing less. 

Credit has a well-deserved history as an early warning signal for markets. But for now, we think it is better to view it as a financial markets passenger. Government bond yields and earnings are in the driver's seat and are much more likely to be important for driving overall direction. For now, we think this can suit credit just fine and continue to expect it to be a relative outperformer. 

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