FICC Focus

Bloomberg Intelligence’s State of Distressed Debt hosts Noel Hebert, Phil Brendel and Negisa Balluku explore what 2026 may have in store for the leveraged finance markets. Noel and Phil open the podcast by discussing the scarcity of distressed opportunities as high yield spreads test all-time tights, with would-be catalysts for a reversal repeatedly shrugged off by a seemingly invincible credit rally. Negisa then breaks down the latest legal developments in newly bankrupt STG Logistics, First Brands and United Site Services. Phil shares his first-day thoughts on Saks Global Enterprises’ Chapter 11 filing. The podcast concludes with Negisa’s take on the fallout from the Supreme Court’s denial of Hertz’s petition for review and Phil’s thoughts on Ardagh’s Chapter 15 filing.

Private credit is becoming an alternative to loan financing and CLOs are driving most loan supply. In this Credit Crunch podcast, host Mahesh Bhimalingam, Global Head of Credit Strategy at Bloomberg Intelligence and Paul Mehta, Leveraged Credit Portfolio Manager at Aberdeen Investments, reflect on how both the US and European leveraged loan markets fared and on the outlook for loans in 2026. They discuss BI’s leveraged loan outlook publication covering loan pricing, returns, supply and relative value vs. high yield bonds as well as loan growth relative to the bond market using Bloomberg loan and bond indexes. They also address private credit in detail including financing premiums, sizes and risks along with the outlook for CLO issuance, reinvestment risks, arbitrage evolution and implications for 2026.

SPX correlation is historically low, while the average single-stock volatility is elevated amid AI momentum. In this edition of the All Options Considered podcast, BI's Chief Global Derivatives Strategist Tanvir Sandhu is joined by Maxwell Grinacoff, Head of US Equity Derivatives Research at UBS. They discuss the dynamics of equity volatility, growth of derivative-based ETFs, shift in product composition and option flow as a source of market dislocations.

The quantity of reserves is now determined by the amount necessary to run the payment system, says Darrell Duffie, a professor at Stanford University. On the Macro Matters podcast, Duffie joins hosts Ira Jersey, Bloomberg Intelligence’s chief US rates strategist, and Will Hoffman, BI’s US and Canada rates strategist, to discuss the Federal Reserve’s policy implementation framework. They cover ongoing shifts in balance-sheet policy and a return to net Treasury purchases, changes to the US banking and payments systems and what those mean for the size of the Fed’s balance sheet. They also touch on the nuanced challenges posed by stigma around the Fed’s lending facilities.

The Macro Matters podcast is part of BI’s FICC Focus series.

“Time can be a good thing. Time can be a very bad thing…I think the whole market moves a bit slower now when there are problems in terms of how those problems get dealt with,” says Axar Capital founder & CEO Andrew Axelrod when discussing the evolution in markets away from mark-to-market investment vehicles. Axelrod joins Bloomberg Intelligence’s Noel Hebert on the latest episode of Credit Crunch to talk about how he sees the current credit backdrop, whether the 4Q credit flare-ups are cockroach, canary or just commonplace, and the challenges to recoveries from zombie owners.