Is something wrong in credit markets? A simple look at the risk premiums, or spreads, on cash bonds and those on credit derivatives shows a heightened dislocation has developed since last summer, says Geraud Charpin at UBS.

The market, he says, has become polarised between buyers of risk that focus on new corporate issues (cash bonds) and sellers of risk that focus on credit default swaps (CDS), the derivatives that provide a kind of insurance against non-payment of corporate debt.