Credit Crunch Ahead?

SLOOS was on the loose today, yet stock prices continued to snooze.

The Fed's Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey was released yesterday after the market's close. It showed that banks continued to tighten their lending standards following the banking crisis that started during the second week of March (chart). Yet the DJIA barely budged falling 56.88 points and the S&P 500 lost just 0.46%. The S&P 500 VIX ended the day at 17.7. The spread between the yields on US high-yield corporate bonds and the 10-year Treasury note continued to meander around 500bps, as it has for the past year.