DC

Chamath's CDS Bet: Outlining Major Corporate Debt Default Risks "With all of the tariffs, the one thing that we haven't sufficiently talked about is there is a tremendous amount of corporate debt that supports these businesses today." "And you would say, 'Well, if long-term rates go down, there's no real risk.'" "But the tariff picture actually impacts revenues." "And the problem with that is that there's a lot of companies that have debt covenants tied to revenue and EBITDA." "And so this is what I spoke about at the beginning of January, which is, the one risk that is uncontrollable, is what happens to corporate debt and could we see a wave of defaults and a wave of action?" On our 2025 predictions show in January, @chamath picked credit default swaps as his best-performing asset this year, calling it a long-shot with major upside: " I would be long CDS. I'm buying insurance using credit default swaps. I think that there is a small chance of some volatility next year. I hope it doesn't happen. I hope that this trade loses money. But if it hits, it will be the best-performing asset of 2025." Fast-forward to April: " It has hit. For every billion dollars of risk you would've put on, would have cost you ~$1M, and that million dollars would've made you ~$7M in about three months." "Why is this important? The CDS actually represents the structural risk in the United States corporate economy." "So when you see these spreads blowing out, this is actually a very important warning sign." "This is what was the canary in the coal mine for the Great Financial Crisis." "The tariff picture and the recession picture will get played out in this chart." "And I think it's something that folks can and should probably pay tremendous attention to."