Moody's: Asian Liquidity Stress Index stable at 24% in May

Moody's Investors Service says that its Asian Liquidity Stress Index remained at 24% in May for the third consecutive month.

The number of rated high-yield companies with Moody's weakest speculative-grade liquidity (SGL-4) score remained at 30, while the number of rated high-yield companies remained at 125.

"The index -- which increases when speculative-grade liquidity appears to decrease -- remains well below the record high of 37% reached in December 2008 amid the global financial crisis," says Brian Grieser, a Moody's Vice President and Senior Analyst.

"It is a bit above the index's long-term rolling average of 20.5% and its trailing 12-month average of 22.6%," adds Grieser, who was speaking on the release of Moody's latest report on the index, entitled "Asian Liquidity Stress Index."

The liquidity sub-index for Chinese speculative-grade companies also was unchanged at 28.6% in May, as the number of Chinese companies with SGL-4 scores remained at 18, and the total number of high-yield Chinese companies remained at 63.

And China's high-yield property sub-index was flat at 21.1% in May, while the Chinese high-yield industrial sub-index was high at 40.0% as the number of industrial issuers remained at 25.

At the same time, the Indonesian sub-index remained at 8.7% as the number of Indonesian companies with an SGL-4 score was unchanged at two and the total number of high-yield Indonesian companies was flat at 23.

Finally, Moody's took one downgrade action in May, resulting in a downgrade/upgrade ratio of 2.5x for Q2 2015 (as of end-May), which was below the 4.7x recorded for Q1 2015, but higher than the 12 month trailing average of 2.0x.