Today's Major Market Move: Italian Credit Default Swaps Gain 14% in Past Week

Prices on Italian Sovereign 5 Year Credit Default Swaps gained 14% in the past week. Italian CDS weren't the worst performer in the world (that would be the U.S.) or even in Europe (that honor goes to Spain), but since Italian bonds have been under so much scrutiny over the past few days we thought it would be fitting to make Italy the subject of our latest Major Market Move post. Here's the list of the biggest price gainers in sovereign CDS over the past week (soreted by % change):

Here's the same table sorted by current value:

Click here to go to the live version of the table.

It's interesting to note that Italy is about to pass Hungary in terms of perceived default risk. Greek CDS have actually stopped trading, for obvious reasons (why bother if the rules are going to be changed on the fly). In fact, I'm surprised that any of the sovereign CDS are still trading and I'd be interested to know who is still buying these things.