is there any quantitative analysis for that?? (We have Bloomberg on the college campus so please feel free to give any Bloomberg advice)thanks,t

The more "emerging market" you get, the more investment is intermediated by banks, and the less publicly traded corporate debt you get. In the really emerging markets, there aren't even any domestic bank loans to corporations, but only foreign loans to local quasi-government agencies.Here is a list of the popular bonds traded by ICAP which shoud give you an idea of their relative volume.Right off you see Czech Republic, Poland, and South Africa. Other popular issuers seem to include Colombia (yen and dollar-denominated), Jordan (government and utility), Malaysia (government and corporate), Romania (government and tradeable loans?), Russia (government, petroleum-backed), Turkey...Brady Bondshighest volume: Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Venezuelaother past issuers: Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Phillipines, Poland, Russia, Uruguay, VietnamDollar-Denominated DebtBangladesh, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Guyana, Jamaica, Jordan, Laos, Mongolia, Morocco, Nicaragua, Sudan, Surinam, Vietnam (Cuban debt not traded in US)

Thanks farmer!Could you please elborate on the following statement of yours." The more "emerging market" you get, the more investment is intermediated by banks, and the less publicly traded corporate debt you get. In the really emerging markets, there aren't even any domestic bank loans to corporations, but only foreign loans to local quasi-government agencies. "Also, is there some good Brady Bonds stuff that I could read off the Internet. i.e. the history, the technicalities of the bond, etc. Thankst

I guess I just wanted to characterize what "commonly traded" might mean.First of all, you have the relative sizes of these economies compared to the size of, say, Japan. All added together, it's probably still almost nothing. Then you have the percentage of debt that is corporate to total debt, and the percentage of that that is traded, and you're probably almost to zero.(emerging total/Japan) * (corporate emerging/government emerging) * (tradeable / privately held) = 0In the US, a company like GE will sell a lot of bonds, as well as stock to the public. In other countries, not only are promoters more likely to finance through debt than equity, but they're more likely to sell it to professional insiders, such as banks. Those banks then might sell notes to US banks, or some international relief fund, or something.I get the idea that, in the 1990's, these countries printed a bunch of money, and then sold developed-economy investors bonds backed either by small manufacturing, or mining companies, real basic industrial stuff. And then the foreign investors wanted to shorten up their duration, and the currencies crashed. It's probably like if US investors bought the foreign loans directly, and then bought default swaps off foreign local banks, but the local banks didn't have any margin or dollar-denominated collateral.But anyway, intermediated basically means that the risk is rebranded, from the specific project revenues, to some central bank or government. So that a US bank won't invest in a bond from the XYZ Mining Corporation, but more likely they'll invest in the bonds of some National Redevelopment Agency, who will hold all the domestic loans in an illiquid portfolio. So foreign banks will never touch the specific loans, and not enough private speculator funds will be involved to really make for a dealing business between them.At that point, any portion of an emerging-market loan that is not correlated to international fixed-income benchmarks, can't really be marked to market by quantitative techniques. You won't have a long pricing series or anything. If you put up a spread, you're not likely to get two-sided action, and there's not a lot to hedge against. And there's too big an advantage to people operating off fundamental (non-numeric) data.Mind you, this is all just guesses. I've never even seen a foreign bond through a telescope, much less been inside a bank where they trade them.

Thanks again.Any references on the internet/BBG on stuff like this will be helpful.thnakst

In South Africa, there is fairly little corporate debt. Hence ratings and credit spreads are a complete mystery. Historically the corporates have raised money by outright borrowing rather than debt issue. There is a big swing now to convertible bond issues (you should include that in your analysis, otherwise the picture may be distorted) both ZAR and USD denominated.

Anybody know what's going on with the Argentinean debt swap?Bonds are supposedly trading WI, but has anyone gotten confirmation regarding theirexchange into the new debt (assuming you are part of the 76% who accepted Argie's offer)? I thought this was supposed to be known weeks ago.First settlement date for the new debt is April 1st.