So marked has Morgan Stanley's increased profile and improvement in credit derivatives been that we were within a whisker of giving it the top award. But Morgan Stanley still has one or two gaps, such as in high-yield default-swap trading where it has lagged behind JPMorgan in the joint product they unveiled in April.
But Morgan Stanley is without doubt the name most of its peers mention as the most active on the Street, pushing innovation, gaining market share, and rivalling JPMorgan and Deutsche as standard bearers for broadening the appeal of the product and seeking market standardization.
What seems to have done most to help Morgan Stanley's rise is its synthetic Tracers product. Structured as a five-year bullet tradable index referenced off 50 of the most liquid names in the credit markets, it soon became widely quoted on the Street and in the press as a way of gauging investor sentiment during one of the most volatile periods the credit markets have experienced. It also became a popular tradable instrument.
At the start of April the firm announced a joint venture with JPMorgan to develop the index further.