Home › Topics › Credit Cycles
FR · Cycles de crédit

Topic

Credit Cycles

Credit turns before the economy does, and it rarely turns gently. Leverage supports growth while lending standards stay loose; once they tighten, the snap is sudden and its effects fall unevenly on households, firms and banks. High-yield and BBB spreads, the shifting composition of US investment grade and a study of credit stress ahead of equity declines since 1997 help place the cycle in time.

24pieces
5in-depth analyses
14datasets

Where to start

Three reads, in order: the basics, the full mechanism, then what the data says.

01The basics How a Credit Crunch Unfolds and Why Its Effects Are Asymmetric How a credit crunch breaks credit supply, why its effects spread unevenly across borrowers and sectors, and what 2008 and prior episodes reveal. AnalysisRead → 02The full mechanism Real Estate’s True Cycle Is Credit, Not Prices Property prices are a lagging indicator. Real estate's true cycle runs through credit availability, the real cost of capital, and bank lending standards. In-depth analysisRead → 03The evidence Five Recession Detection Rules Tested Against 75 Years of US Data: One Composite Has Never Been Wrong Sahm Rule has 2 historical false positives (2003, 2024). StudyRead →

Research and data

Our in-depth research and the downloadable series on the subject.

Dataset BAMLH0A0HYM2: ICE BofA US High Yield Index Option-Adjusted Spread Daily BAMLH0A0HYM2, daily ICE BofA US High Yield option-adjusted spread: history, regimes, pitfalls. See the data → Dataset DRTSCILM: Net Percentage of US Banks Tightening C&I Loan Standards (SLOOS) Since 1990 DRTSCILM quarterly SLOOS data: net percentage of US banks tightening C&I loan standards since 1990. See the data → StudyThe BBB-ification of Corporate America: 30 Years of US Investment Grade Composition (1996–2026) BBB-rated bonds made up half of one of the main US investment grade corporate bond indices in 2022, up from 25% in 1990 (BIS). In-depth analysisREITs and the rate cycle: how listed property reprices

All analyses, by angle

Grouped by sub-topic rather than by date. Filter to get straight to the point.

Other angles17

Related topics

The subjects that most often intersect with this topic in our analyses.

Housing & Real Estate42 pieces Housing’s real cycle is a credit cycle: transaction volumes react to rates long before prices do. 3 in common → Monetary Transmission50 pieces Between a central bank decision and its effect on credit, jobs and prices, more than a year often goes by. 3 in common → Economic Cycles64 pieces A slowdown is not a recession, and quarterly headlines rarely reveal which phase the economy is in. 2 in common → Financial Instability24 pieces Financial stress is measurable: it often shows up in volatility and credit spreads before it reaches the headlines. 1 in common → Inflation114 pieces Inflation is a regime rather than a monthly print, and its persistence matters more than its level. 1 in common → Yield Curve47 pieces The slope of the yield curve is the market’s compressed forecast for growth, inflation and central bank policy. 1 in common →
This topic also exists in French.Cycles de crédit, 13 pieces →