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Strategies & Market Trends : Paint The Table -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MulhollandDrive who wrote (17871)	3/6/2002 9:31:30 PM
From: John Pitera	Respond to of 23786

Mrs. P, remember that credit spreads expanded and then contracted across the board from March 2000 to Sept 2001 and now Feb of 2002. the 11 AAA rated corporations saw their premium over treasuries go from 99 basis points (1 % above the 10 year Note) and then rise all the way to 183 basis points in Sept 2001 and they have now fallen back to 121 basis points above the Master 10 year note yield. So in credit spread analysis it's not necessary to focus and think just about the companies that are saddled with heavy debt loads as being the only area in which financial system strains are detected. But it's true that we've seen more companies corporate debt slipping down the rating agency's ratings scale. That's obviously a characteristic of economic downturns and bear markets. S&P rates bonds : AAA AA A BBB Moody's rates a BBB as a Baa bond (same quality) BB BB- B