US CLO Weekly: A repricing deluge

Research evidence excerpt

US CLO Weekly: A repricing deluge

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Macroeconomic fluctuations often account for most of the risks associated with exposures to instruments that promise to pay fixed or variable interest rates. For an investor who is long

fixed-rate instruments (thus receiving these cash flows), increases in interest rates naturally lift the discount factors applied to the expected cash flows and thus cause a loss. The longer the

maturity of a certain cash flow and the higher the move in the discount factor, the higher will be the loss. Upside surprises in inflation, fiscal funding needs, and FX depreciation rates are

among the most common adverse macroeconomic shocks to receivers. But counterparty exposure, issuer creditworthiness, client segmentation, regulation (including changes in assets

holding limits for different types of investors), changes in tax policies, currency convertibility (which may constrain currency conversion, repatriation of profits and/or liquidation of positions),

and settlement issues related to local clearing houses are also important risk factors. The sensitivity of fixed-income instruments to macroeconomic shocks may be mitigated by indexing the

contracted cash flows to inflation, to FX depreciation, or to specified interest rates - these are common in emerging markets. The index fixings may - by construction - lag or mis-measure the

actual move in the underlying variables they are intended to track. The choice of the proper fixing (or metric) is particularly important in swaps markets, where floating coupon rates (i.e.,

coupons indexed to a typically short-dated interest rate reference index) are exchanged for fixed coupons. Funding in a currency that differs from the currency in which coupons are

denominated carries FX risk.