DISTRESSED DAILY: Bond Market Only a Little Bad, N.Y. Fed Says

The corporate bond market is functioning only a little worse than it did last year, according to economists at the New York Federal Reserve.

Bright minds at the central bank have put together a math-heavy index to gauge conditions in the U.S. corporate bond market. It’s called the U.S. Corporate Bond Market Distress Index, or CMDI for short.

It distills a swath of metrics -- primary market issuance, duration-matched spread and liquidity to name a few -- into a handy index. The higher the readout, the worse things are.

Bottom line: the market is functioning just fine, though things are ...