<div class="video_container" data-attachment="308715"> <div id="video_2" class="video"> <h2>Video:</h2> <p>Outlook for US Credit</p> </div> </div> While the factors in play in government bond markets have a direct and powerful impact on credit markets; the latter also dance to a series of their own factors, including single-name risk (including earnings and balance-sheet factors not to men

IFR: Welcome to IFR’s US Credit Roundtable. We’re going to be exploring the themes, trends and drivers at play in the US primary and secondary US credit markets. I wanted to start with the impact of what’s happening in the US rates market and with US Treasuries. In terms of the direct impact of the themes and the anxieties that reside in the rates world, to what extent have those transmuted themselves into the credit world and to what extent are the issues that drive credit sentiment more idiosy

Hans Mikkelsen BofA Merrill Lynch Hans Mikkelsen is head of US investment-grade credit strategy at BofAML Global Research. He formulates US macro and high-grade credit strategy, providing relative value strategy research across cash and derivatives markets. Peter Aherne Citigroup Peter Aherne is head of North America investment-grade capital markets syndicate and new products at Citigroup, responsible for the origination and execution of US dollar transactions for global corporations and financi

IFR: Dan, if we move into a rate-tightening cycle, what mitigants might there be to any volatility that emerges in the credit space? What are your concerns about the credit asset class in a rate-tightening cycle? Dan Sorid, Deutsche Bank: There are so many variables and it depends really on what the Fed does and what the conditions are under which they do them. I would say that the most important factor for credit today, assuming that conditions are strong enough for them to hike, is whether the

IFR: Dan, this notion of credit trading on technicals rather than fundamentals, what’s going to make that behaviour shift back to fundamentals? The default statistics have been fairly benign but people are starting to point to a corporate earnings recession. It sounds to me like this could be storing up trouble for the future.   Dan Sorid, Deutsche Bank: Anecdotally, strategists like Hans and myself use ex-energy indices right now because the energy sector has performed very poorly. Then we’ve h