Sovereign CDS spreads
The market's live price for insuring a government's debt against default.
Close to default?
A credit default swap spread, in basis points. Which country is the market worried about? Switzerland or Egypt, Japan or Argentina — the number tells you, if you can read it.
Rank the risk
Three countries per round. Pick the one whose credit risk matches the spread on screen.
Crisis intuition
Spreads widen long before headlines appear — this game trains you to notice.
Reading default risk before it becomes news
Credit default swaps were the instrument that flagged the 2008 crisis and the euro sovereign crisis while equities were still calm. Understanding roughly where a country's spread should sit — and what it means when it doubles in a month — is one of the most underrated skills in markets, and it is almost entirely comparative: you learn it by seeing many countries next to each other.
Frequently asked questions
What is a CDS spread?
The annual cost, in basis points, of insuring against a borrower defaulting. A 5-year sovereign CDS at 40bp means roughly €40,000 a year to insure €10m of that country's debt.
How does the game work?
A credit default swap spread appears and you pick which country it belongs to from three options. The wider the spread, the riskier the market thinks that issuer is.
Is it hard?
It rewards a feel for relative risk rather than memorised numbers — you mostly need to rank countries against each other, not recall exact levels.