Anyone else wish there was retail access to CDS markets?

http://traccr.com/ came up when I googled this. Looks like a rather long winded way to go around it but I believe this sort of product is simply too sophisticated for your run of the mill retail client. Also, given it is at times a fairly illiquid market (primarily used by corporates and institutional investors only) I'd say the counterparty risk for market makers would be too huge to make it worth their time. That's my $0.02

http://www.cboe.com/micro/credit/introduction.aspx

CBOE has a couple products that are essentially CDS's. I dont feel like reading into it now, but I did a while back when these first came out and I remember the issue was that it was only offered on legit like 10 companies, lol. Then again, that was a while ago so there may be many more now.

To get exposure to only the credit you can go long a bond and short a treasury of similar duration. This isolates the credit exposure. You don't get the insurance-like aspects of CDS, but it focuses on the same risk component.

to go long CDS just go short JPM

CDS require an investment level that far exceeds the average persons investment scope, no offense guys but the average CDS investor is risking last I heard 50 to 100mm on the trade. It's out of my reach as well :(. It sucks you have to loose 50mm to buy 300mm worth of insurance on the back end. Can't we all just game the system and risk 100k trade and pay 1mm for a 50mm CDS policy, jeez wouldn't life be great!

Imagine how credit markets would react with everyone who has a computer getting into CDS?

no i don't, because i don't think my mom should be allowed to even look at a CDS contract out of the corner of her eye

What exposure exactly are you looking for? If you want to be long credit just buy bonds/bond index and short treasury/ buy a short treasury ETF (several exist). If you want to be short corporate credit buy an inverse corporate credit ETF (e.g., IGS) and go long treasuries to isolate the credit exposure.