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Technical Olympic USA's term loan fell 15-20 points to 68, rounding off a 32 points drop over the past two weeks.

James Deighton, co-head of investment-grade cash and synthetic credit trading at Dresdner Kleinwort in London, has been named head of the group following the departure of co-head Paul Grimsey. Henry Nevstad, head of credit flow products at Dresdner in London, said Grimsey will not be replaced. Dresdner has lost a raft of credit derivatives traders over the last year, including Femi Adewaley, a senior correlation trader, two weeks ago.

Amaranth Advisors has sold at least most of a $572.5 million portfolio of net-interest margin bonds in the wake of $6 billion in energy trading losses.

Robust deal flow gave way to some favorable market conditions and oversubscription, leading to a number of credits flexing down.

Joel Binder, chief investment strategist at Old Second Wealth Management, said the firm has not been buying a lot of corporates recently, but may look to them in the future.

As the mega-deal for Michaels looms on the horizon, investors are already pondering what kinds of free goodies the company will be giving out:

The following charts show the top five advancers and decliners in terms of % moves in the loan, bond and credit default swap markets for the previous week. Data provided by Markit Group.

As new uses of loan-only credit default swaps continue to emerge, one area some market players are keeping an eye on is whether the product will allow--and encourage--banks to bid more aggressively for deals.

Hedge funds were buying the bonds of Northwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines, betting there would be a significant bounce back when they emerged from bankruptcy.

This chart, provided by Citigroup Global Markets, tracks bid-ask prices for par credit facilities that trade in the secondary market.

--Raymond Pare, senior finance director at Alimentation Couche-Tard, about why the company cut the number of banks in its syndicate to 11.

Several dozen market professionals, including bankers, rating analysts, CDO investors and managers congregated at the Ritz Carlton in Hong Kong last week to discuss developments in the CDO space.