19Mar/12Off
The absolute and relative risk of a credit portfolio
The absolute and relative risk of a credit portfolio consequently is a function of the number of bonds and the magnitude of the benchmark deviations in a portfolio. Yet, the overall credit environment, or more exactly the volatility of spreads and the level of default rates, largely determines the level of risk. As our study illustrates, investors should have expected equally weighted portfolios of 50 corporate bonds to realize a tracking error between 0.9 and 1.3 percent during the volatile credit environment of 2002. Keeping the portfolios constant for the next three months those portfolios actually would have averaged tracking errors between 0.8 and 1.5 percent.