The Market’s Obsession With Credit Rating and Rating Agencies

We live in a complex and ever changing financial environment where the role and behaviour of the financial markets as well as its participants is under constant scrutiny like never before. And while the worst of the CRISIS is now behind us a post-crisis world economy is still struggling with a weak growth prospect. Although most banks in Europe as well as the US are getting back in shape and the corporates seem to be holding abundant cash it isn’t trickling down to benefit the real economy. This by no means is unexpected or a surprise and there are a number of reasons and factors at play and one of them is the financial health of governments around the world especially in the developed world as reflected by the downgrades in credit ratings of countries like the US, France, the UK, Spain among others with few exceptions.

Economic growth requires investment and risk taking and clearly the market isn’t delivering on both these issues yet. The markets obsession with credit rating and rating agencies comes from our love for playing the blame game and also our inherent nature of running away from taking responsibilities for an undesired or bad outcome from the decisions we take or have taken. The reality is everybody fails and we all know how badly the rating agencies failed.

Credit is not STATIC and by it’s design dependent on many variables so projecting it’s behaviour over a period of time requires much more than a financial model that incorporates an anticipated change or changes in the business cycles of a specific sector or an industry as well as trends and events going forward. And since most of us don’t have access to a crystal ball understanding a CREDIT more often than not comes down to developing or possessing a GOOD JUDGEMENT. So I always encourage my friends and colleagues to rely on their own judgment skills rather than paying for a borrowed one from a rating agency.

A good investor or a smart money manager should never try to justify buying into a bad investment by saying that they relied on a credit rating report issued by a rating agency. Risk and rewards generally do go hand in hand but not always and this is why I believe that it is important to look at the bigger picture and to get some perspective we should take a page out of the human history. Humanity has survived many crises and also in the process managed to put a man on the moon, explore mars and has a remarkable list of achievements and accomplishments because of its ability to evolve and take risks. Investment is not all about possessing amazing analytical skills. In my own opinion there is much more to it so I would say this Take Investment as an ART form and learn to enjoy your art as a passionate ARTIST would and with time who knows you may create your own masterpiece.