Credit market outperforming despite hostile conditions

Credit markets outperformed last year compared to the other asset classes, despite a background of slow global growth and defaults

Last year was an odd one for the UK corporate bond market. The environment was far from favourable: global growth slowed as the world's largest economies fell into recession; stock markets were plummeting and corporate defaults and ratings downgrades jumped to levels not seen for a decade. But despite this unwholesome background, credit markets put in a performance that was reasonably good in an absolute sense and frankly excellent relative to most other financial asset classes. The UK investment-grade bond market generated a decent positive return for the year, outperforming both gil...