How should the spread risk of a portfolio containing floating rate bonds be measured?

The appropriate way to measure the spread risk of a portfolio containing floating rate bonds is through spread duration. Spread duration is a measure that reflects the sensitivity of a bond's price to changes in the credit spread relative to a benchmark, generally considered to be the risk-free rate.

Floating rate bonds typically have interest payments that are tied to a reference rate, like LIBOR or SOFR, which means that their price is more closely tied to changes in credit spreads rather than interest rates themselves. Because of this relationship, spread duration effectively captures how much the value of the floating rate bond is likely to change with a shift in credit spreads.

In contrast, duration itself is primarily a measure of interest rate risk and does not specifically account for changes in spreads, meaning it would not provide an accurate representation of the risks associated with floating rate bonds. Similarly, while value-at-risk analysis offers a broader view of potential losses in a portfolio, it does not directly quantify the sensitivity to spread changes like spread duration does. Lastly, convexity adjustments pertain to the curvature in the price-yield relationship for bonds and are important for assessing non-linear price behavior, but they are not specifically designed for measuring spread risk.

Therefore, spread duration is the most relevant and accurate metric for