Sovereign CDS spreads have unique predictive power for future stock market index returns, sovereign bond yields, as well as real macroeconomic variables such as GDP and PMI. The predictive power comes almost entirely from the global, rather than country-specific, component of sovereign CDS...

Consistent with information-based theories, ``regular'' ETFs (i.e., those without embedded leverage) are more liquid than their underlyings. Consistent with speculation-based theories, levered ETFs have substantially higher intermediation costs than regular ETFs. The cost difference between...

The sovereign CDS market has been growing rapidly in recent years, with a gross notional amount of around 2 trillion dollars in 2015. We document a strong momentum effect in this market. Its unique feature is that this momentum strategy returns are positively skewed and higher during recessions....

We conduct a survey, on the eve of the 2020 presidential election, of over 3,000 highly experienced and affluent investors about the COVID-19 cases among their social contacts, their political leanings, and expectations. Due to the saturating media coverage on the pandemic at the time of our...

This study examines the effect of economic and political uncertainty on sovereign CDS spreads using a novel panel index of world uncertainty. We document that sovereign CDS spreads widen with uncertainty. A 1% increase in uncertainty leads to a 0.86% increase in sovereign CDS spreads....