What a credit rating tells you, and where ours come from
A credit rating is a rating agency's opinion of an issuer's ability to meet its financial obligations in full and on time — its relative risk of default. It is a view on debt repayment, not on whether a stock is cheap or expensive, which is why it sits apart from the Long Research valuation work.
How Long Research sources each rating
- Issuer disclosures first. When a company states its ratings in its own SEC filings, we present those values and link the exact filing they came from.
- Bond-level records fill the gaps. When a filing does not disclose an agency's rating, we roll it up from that agency's rating actions on the issuer's outstanding bonds (Mergent FISD via WRDS), attributed to the rated issue and action date.
- Cross-checked when both exist. Where the two sources overlap we compare them, mark agreement, and flag any difference rather than hiding it.
Ratings are the opinions of Moody's, S&P Global Ratings, and Fitch Ratings — not Long Research opinions, recommendations, or investment advice. Sourced values can lag the agencies' latest actions.
Bond-level rating records are drawn from Mergent FISD, accessed through Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS). This service and the data available thereon constitute valuable intellectual property and trade secrets of WRDS and/or its third-party suppliers.
Reading the scale
All three agencies grade issuers on a ladder from the strongest capacity to meet obligations down to default. S&P and Fitch share one notation (AAA down to D); Moody's uses its own (Aaa down to C). The two notations line up notch for notch, which is how the table below aligns them.
The most important line on the ladder is the boundary at BBB- / Baa3: ratings at or above it are investment grade (lower expected credit risk), while ratings below it are speculative grade, where vulnerability to nonpayment rises as you move down the scale.