What Is Data Analytics?
What is data analytics? It consists of gathering the proper data and then manipulating and examining it so that you can reach logical conclusions about the data you are looking at. In the case of this book’s topic, it involves data about the corporate debt markets and seeing what conclusions you can derive about the various markets relative to each other and the subsets of each market and their relationships. Ideally, you will see trends developing over time or relationships that do not seem to make sense and these can create opportunities. Several products have been developed in the marketplace, which depend on these analytics as well.
Many tools are used in analytics and you can try to achieve many different goals with the analytics. This book is an introduction that focuses on data and analytics used in the corporate debt markets. It is not intended to be a detailed how-to book, but it does outline how analytics is typically used by the major players in the corporate debt markets as well as the major tools and methods currently used in data analytics in these markets. This book sheds some light on ways these tools are designed, points out some of their shortcomings, and offers a glimpse into where analytics in this field may be starting to go in the future.
Many of the analytical tools used are similar or even exactly the same as those used in the traditional government debt market. Also utilized are many features from the equity markets. Blending these features and detailed macro- and microanalysis creates unique analytical tools for corporate debt instruments.