Alpha Exchange

As head of Macro Credit Research within Private Markets at BlackRock, Amanda Lynam is responsible for assessing how the broad picture of risk impacts credit markets and the securities within them. In doing so, she marries the top down with an understanding of company fundamentals, a skillset developed during her time in a sell-side research role focused on the insurance and healthcare sectors. Our discussion takes stock of the current opportunity set in corporate credit, exploring Amanda's process for finding value amidst an environment of middling credit spreads, but high all-in yields. As most of the heavy lifting is currently being done by the risk-free component, her team sees this continuing, with a view that the bar is high for Fed rate cuts well into 2024.Expecting a higher cost of capital to prevail for some time, Amanda expects more dispersion of returns across issuers in credit, with a view that certain capital structures that added considerable leverage when rates were low will struggle as they ult