Laypeople reading this may remember the boom in CDS before the financial crisis (and how they helped sink AIG). And hey, they're back! CDS trading volumes rose 62 per cent for a group of investment-grade bond issuers in the first half of 2023, according to Barclays. A group of junk-bond issuers' CDS volumes rose 41 per cent in 1H compared to the year before, the bank found.

To be clear, the surge in activity doesn't necessarily mean imminent corporate-debt chaos; we're still cringing at a commentator's doomy social-media post* about the share of investment-grade corporate bonds trading below par. (Fixed-rate bond prices go down automatically when rates and yields go up, meaning the only thing we can conclude from the post is that the Fed has raised rates fast.)