Investors are closely watching the credit market for signs of strain, especially as a growing share of debt is amassed by companies with the weakest ratings.Lindsey Bell, an investment strategist at CFRA, has identified a clear group of losers — and winners — in the stock market if there's another credit-induced crisis.The subprime crisis and the subsequent meltdown in 2008 serve as fresh reminders of just how important debt is to everything else in the system.
Cheap borrowing costs in the post-crisis era fueled a corporate-borrowing binge that included companies with the weakest credit ratings. "Upon a closer look, we found large-cap companies, classified as members of the S&P 500 index, are best positioned to weather a credit-induced storm," Bell said." feature, shows that there's a clear difference between these large-cap companies and their counterparts in the S&P 600 Small Cap Index.companies have lowered their ratio of net debt outstanding to EBITDA by 1.6 times since the financial crisis, Bell said.