Big Picture: Dynamic Markets

Research evidence excerpt

Big Picture: Dynamic Markets

Sales & Trading

US Macro Credit Trading J P M O R G A N

03 August 2026

FOR INSTITUTIONAL & PROFESSIONAL CLIENTS ONLY – This material is from a Sales and Trading department and is not a product of the Research Department.

We had an extremely interesting week in credit, with three major cross-currents impacting how investors are evaluating markets:

1. Rolling Iran headlines, with front-end oil trading in a $10 range this week and Q4 contracts remaining elevated.

2. Mixed tech earnings overall with still-high capex forecasts. At first this sparked further weakness in AI names, but

ultimately led to a sharp local bounce in hyperscaler credit spreads.

3. Rates bear steepened after a more dovish than expected Fed. 30y rates are at their highest level since 2007.

These competing macro narratives led to lower realized correlations, both between credit indices and other asset classes, and also

among sectors and issuers within credit. On this note, the S46 indices are trading somewhat independently and with a higher beta

to technology than older series. This is especially true in IG, where Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft were added last March to S46,

and several topical non-tech names are present only in older series such as Paramount and Whirlpool.

This confluence of inputs also led to intense intraday chop in 5y spreads. At the same time, we respected somewhat modest total

weekly ranges of 52.25-54.75 in IG and $107.1-$107.6 in HY, and ended the week tighter than the previous Friday. We expect

this localized volatility to continue as we enter August, and wonder if the price action suggests we are poised for a bigger

breakout of the recent range. Let us know what you think!

Theo