Research Recap Releases Q1 Research Zeitgeist

Our Research Recap blog spotlights compelling credit, investment, economic, industry and market research reports each day. Launched last summer, we’ve found that Research Recap is often quite adept at identifying themes before they hit the mainstream news.

Research Recap editors began focusing heavily on the subprime crisis and the credit crunch early last summer, long before terms like CDO, SIV and and CDS became household terms.

One fascinating byproduct of Research Recap is the Research Zeitgeist. Research Zeitgeist provides a glimpse into the content that’s being read most widely on the Research Recap site.  We publish a weekly Zeitgeist as well as a more comprehensive quarterly Research Zeitgeist.

The Research Zeitgeist for the first quarter of 2008 was released this morning. Not surprisingly, the most widely read posts of the quarter largely reflected the credit crunch and market turbulence of recent months.

The most widely read post was Credit Sights’ Warning Signs Seen in Rising Credit Card Delinquencies. Two of our research primer posts followed - Research Primer: Credit Default Swaps by Fitch Research with Moody’s Research Primer: Structured Investment Vehicles just behind.  Bond Insurer Downgrades Could Lead to Bank Downgrades, focusing on an S&P report, was next, with the IMF’s Role of Hedge Funds in Subprime Crisis Examined rounding out the top five.

One interesting note is that the ten most-widely read posts sourced eight primary research providers. Only Credit Sights showed up twice, with rating agencies Fitch, Moody's and S&P each appearing once. Other sources among the top ten included NERA Economic Consulting, the International Monetary Fund, Oxford Analytica and Audit Integrity.

The full list of the top ten most widely read posts is available on the Research Recap site.