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Finance. You know the problem: the data is scattered, the good stuff sits behind paywalls, and most of what's left is noise.
Trading Away puts it all in one place. Every weekend you'll get one read on what happened and why it matters: the tape, new deals, restructurings, the fights in and out of court, and what's coming next week. Separately, we'll go deep on specific situations when they deserve it.
No nonsense, no hype, no adjustments to EBITDA. Just what's happening, told straight.
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Let’s get to it.
The Open
Last week the bond market started charging AI borrowers more. This week the borrowers paid it. Volta paid up to get its loan sold, Anthropic offered double digits on junior debt, and the bottom of the junk market kept pulling away from the top.
If you read nothing else:
Volta's $5 billion AI loan priced at 95 and S+650, pushing the yield past 11% after banks sweetened terms.
Anthropic offered Blackstone a 10% coupon on $9 billion of junior debt in a proposed $60 billion chip financing.
The CCC-to-BB spread gap hit 10.83 points on Oct 14, the widest since at least January 2025.
Headlines
Dimon is pumping the brakes. JPMorgan says it's "tightening up a little bit" on credit, citing loose terms, weak covenants and too much priming, while building $539mm of reserves.
A record fine for the No. 2 bank. Treasury hit Bank of America with more than $1.21bn of AML and sanctions penalties, including the largest in OCC history, after it failed to report over $5bn of suspicious activity on time.
A rare Friday print. BofA came to market Friday for at least $6bn of IG bonds, only the fifth Friday high-grade deal of 2026. JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley had raised $10bn combined earlier in the week.
The Fed finally counts private credit. New Fed data puts private credit loans to US businesses at about $1.5tn at end-2025, roughly 6% of nonfinancial business debt, up from about 1% in 2012.
Another software LBO for the loan market. GTCR and Elliott agreed to take CCC Intelligent Solutions private at about $6.1bn of enterprise value. JPMorgan leads the committed financing, Citi is in, and closing is expected in Q1 2027.
Penske keeps it in the family. Penske Corp. and Mitsui agreed to take Penske Automotive private at $212 a share, about $16.3bn of enterprise value. There's no financing condition and closing is targeted for Q1 2027.
A $2tn hole. The US ran a $1.992tn deficit in fiscal 2026, up 12%, and net interest topped $1tn. Treasury supply isn't getting any lighter.
The Tape
Spreads up, yields down. HY OAS widened to 3.23% on Oct 15 from 3.15% a week earlier. The 10-year fell 12bp, so the HY effective yield slipped to 8.08%.
CCCs did the damage again. CCC & lower OAS hit 12.82% on Oct 14 before easing to 12.78%. A month ago it was 10.85%. BB moved 3bps.
The Morningstar LSTA US Leveraged Loan Index returned -0.15% for the week to Oct 15. The week prior, loan prices fell $0.29 for a third straight weekly drop, to their lowest close since early July. HY funds took in $338 million and loan funds $1.9 billion.
New Paper
Volta clears, at a price. JPMorgan and Goldman sold Volta's $5 billion debt package at S+650 and 95, after first marketing it at S+625-650 and 97-98. It's a $1.3 billion term loan for data-center lease payments plus a $3.7 billion chip loan backed by about 36,000 Nvidia GPUs. It's unrated, and it added call protection that CLO managers didn't love.
Anthropic's "Project North Star." A proposed $60 billion package to finance about 1.5GW of Google TPUs: $42 billion of senior debt guaranteed by Broadcom and $18 billion of junior debt, with Blackstone funds taking $9 billion at a 10% or higher coupon. Anthropic carries a KBRA rating one notch below investment grade, not the usual Moody’s or S&P rating. The deal isn't closed, but a “near-investment grade” borrower is preparing to pay double digits for subordinated debt.
Hot Topic: Virgin Media O2
What's happening: On Oct 2, the UK CMA provisionally found that nexfibre's purchase of Substantial (Netomnia's parent) may substantially lessen competition. nexfibre is the fiber JV of Liberty Global, Telefónica and InfraVia. (CMA)
Why now: The ruling puts about £950 million of upfront cash due to VMO2 at risk. VMO2's 3.75% 2030 SUNs fell about 30 points into the mid-30s, and VodafoneZiggo's 2032 SUNs dropped about 17 points.
What's at stake: One regulatory decision is driving recoveries across two Liberty Global capital structures.
What to watch: Responses to the CMA are due by 5pm Friday, Oct 23.
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Pressure Points
AI credit: the bounce isn't the all-clear. CoreWeave's 9.75% 2031s traded as low as 78 on Oct 14 and were back to 83 on Oct 15. On Friday they changed hands around 83.35, a 14.58% yield. CDS hit records above 1,000bp on about $50 billion of total debt, and the shares fell more than 11% Friday, nearly 25% on the week, according to Reuters. CoreWeave’s bonds are on track for a fifth straight weekly decline. Junk buyers are increasingly freezing out tech startups looking for financing, Bloomberg's Saturday Credit Weekly says. The trigger was CoreWeave's co-founder saying the company is exploring investment-grade borrowing, which fed fears it plans to borrow a lot more.
FMC: from loss warning to bank talks. FMC now sees Q3 adjusted EBITDA of negative $510-565 million and plans to discuss "potential further modifications" to its covenants with its bank group. Its 5.65% 2033s fell nearly 12 points to a record-low 74 cents.
Hertz: revolver lenders lawyer up. Lenders under Hertz's revolver have hired Milbank ahead of possible talks, Bloomberg reported after Friday's close. Hertz is working with PJT to push out maturities. Secured lenders already have Evercore and Gibson Dunn, and a Canso-led group has Houlihan Lokey and Ropes & Gray. Hertz has about $6bn of non-vehicle debt and about $2.7bn of loans due in 2028.
Hain Celestial: weighing Chapter 11. Hain could file for bankruptcy as soon as next month after an Oct 12 deadline to amend its credit agreement passed. The Aurelius sale of its European business (up to $310 million for debt paydown) needed lenders to extend the December maturity.
Mercer International: in the grace period. Mercer skipped about $25.8 million of interest on its 12.875% 2028s and is negotiating a recap with a group holding more than 75% of its 2028s and 2029s.
JELD-WEN: holdouts go junior. Holders of 94.5% of its 2027 notes and 72.2% of its 2028 term loans agreed to swap into new first-lien notes at 10.50% cash, with $135 million of new money. A standard non-pro-rata exchange, and holdouts end up behind the new notes.
Cogent: the refi didn't stick. Creditors are organizing after an attempt to refinance Cogent's $750mm of bonds due June 2027 failed to gain traction. Unsecured holders have hired Houlihan Lokey and Akin Gump. The company brought in Evercore alongside Latham.
Docket Watch
LIV Golf gets its RSA. On Oct 14, Judge Kaplan (D.N.J.) approved LIV's amended RSA. The next hearing is Oct 20.
Cumulus Media emerges. Cumulus exited its prepackaged Chapter 11 on Oct 16, canceling about $600 million of funded debt in exchange for 100% of the new equity and $50 million of new converts to former lenders.
Downgrades & Defaults
Springs Window Fashions (SWF Holdings I) to CCC. S&P cut it from CCC+ on Oct 14, citing leverage above 25x and a free-cash-flow deficit of more than $80 million.
Barracuda Parent (KKR), Moody's, CFR cut to Caa1, outlook still negative, Oct 16.
1440 Foods Topco to CCC from CC. S&P flagged continued cash-flow deficits and a higher chance of a distressed restructuring.
Private Credit
The AI test. Reuters calls CoreWeave one of the biggest links between private credit and the AI buildout, with GPU-backed facilities that have grown to an $8.5 billion facility in March.
Lots of money raised, less of it lent. Direct-lending funds raised a record $129.15 billion in the first nine months, but Q3 lending fell 28%. Syndicated loans refinanced $16.39 billion of direct-lending deals, versus $2.60 billion going the other way. Too much dry powder is chasing too few deals.
Carlyle buys Truist's LightStream book. Carlyle agreed Friday to buy about $7.7 billion of prime unsecured personal loans from Truist.
Redemptions and BCRED. Q3 requests at 15 nontraded BDCs averaged 9.8% of shares, and nine of the 15 are still above the 5% cap. S&P moved BCRED's outlook to stable from positive. The fund will honor $2.1 billion of $4.3 billion requested, and S&P expects about $530 million of losses from Medallia.
Street Chatter
Perella-Piper is off. The two firms ended their merger talks. Semafor says the retention offers sank it: $2.5 million in stock for top producers, which one banker called "offensively low.” According to the FT, Piper Sandler was Peter Weinberg’s second choice, as he first tried to sell repeatedly to Byron Trott and Gregg Lemkau, his former GS colleagues now at BDT-MSD.
PJT hired Riccardo Villa, co-head of capital solutions at Rede Partners. (WSJ)
Star Mountain hired Comvest co-founder Daniel Lee as an MD for origination. (BusinessWire)
Canyon Partners named Chris Hansen, from TPG Angelo Gordon, partner and CIO. (PR Newswire)
Clear Channel Outdoor named Wade Davis CEO as the Mubadala deal closed. (Clear Channel)
Macro & Calendar: Up Ahead
The 10-year fell to 5.10% even after hot CPI and PPI. CME FedWatch odds of an October hike jumped to 54% after CPI, then fell to about 15% Friday after Chair Warsh said "I don't prejudge meetings." The FOMC meets Oct 27-28.
Chart of the Week
The CCC gap. CCCs now pay 10.81 points more than BBs (Oct 15), up from 7.17 on Jan 2 and well past the 8.31 peak of the April 2025 tariff shock.
Source: ICE BofA via FRED.
Memes
That’s the week. See you next week.
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