Implied Correlations in CDO Tranches
Implied Correlations in CDO Tranches a, b c,⋆ Nicole Lehnert ∗, Frank Altrock , Svetlozar T. Rachev , Stefan Tr¨uck d, Andr´eWilch b aUniversit¨at Karlsruhe, Germany bCredit Risk Management, WestLB AG, Germany cUniversit¨at Karlsruhe, Germany and University of California, Santa Barbara, USA dQueensland University of Technology, Australia Abstract Market quotes of CDO tranches constitute a market view on correlation at differ- ent points in the portfolio capital structure and thus on the shape of the portfolio loss distribution. We investigate different calibrations of the CreditRisk+ model to examine its ability to reproduce iTraxx tranche quotes. Using initial model calibra- tion, CreditRisk+ clearly underestimates senior tranche losses. While sensitivities to correlation are too low, by increasing PD volatility up to about 3 times of the default probability for each name CreditRisk+ produces tails which are fat enough to meet market tranche losses. Additionally, we find that, similar to the correlation skew in the large pool model, to meet market quotes for each tranche a different PD volatility vector has to be used. ⋆ Rachev gratefully acknowledges research support by grants from Division of Math- ematical, Life and Physical Sciences, College of Letters and Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Ger- man Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). ∗ Corresponding author. email: nicole.lehnert@d-fine.de 20 December 2005 1 Introduction Credit derivatives started actively trading in the mid 1990s, exhibiting im- pressive growth rates over the last years. Due to new regulatory requirements there is an increasing demand by holders of securitisable assets to sell assets or to transfer risks of their assets.
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