the credit ratings provided by standard & poor's moody's and fitch are intended to indicate
probability of default
title: Credit rating text: consider long-term ratings. Nowadays, short-term ratings are commonly used. Credit ratings can address a corporation's financial instruments i.e. debt security such as a bond, but also the corporations itself. Ratings are assigned by credit rating agencies, the largest of which are Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch Ratings. They use letter designations such as A, B, C. Higher grades are intended to represent a lower probability of default. Agencies do not attach a hard number of probability of default to each grade, preferring descriptive definitions such as: "the obligor's capacity to meet its financial commitment on the obligation is extremely title: Credit rating text: somewhat similar to Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings with the words high and low replacing the + and −. It goes as follows, from excellent to poor: AAA, AA (high), AA, AA (low), A (high), A, A (low), BBB (high), BBB, BBB (low), BB (high), BB, BB (low), B (high), B, B (low), CCC (high), CCC, CCC (low), CC (high), CC, CC (low), C (high), C, C (low) and D. The short-term ratings often map to long-term ratings though there is room for exceptions at the high or low side of each equivalent. S&P, Moody's, Fitch and DBRS are title: Moody's Investors Service text: Moody's Investors Service Moody's Investors Service, often referred to as Moody's, is the bond credit rating business of Moody's Corporation, representing the company's traditional line of business and its historical name. Moody's Investors Service provides international financial research on bonds issued by commercial and government entities. Moody's, along with Standard & Poor's and Fitch Group, is considered one of the Big Three credit rating agencies. The company ranks the creditworthiness of borrowers using a standardized ratings scale which measures expected investor loss in the event of default. Moody's Investors Service rates debt securities in several bond market segments. These include title: Bond credit rating text: and (5) issuers of government securities, municipal securities, or securities issued by a foreign government. The credit rating is a financial indicator to potential investors of debt securities such as bonds. These are assigned by credit rating agencies such as Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings to have letter designations (such as AAA, B, CC) which represent the quality of a bond. Moody's assigns bond credit ratings of Aaa, Aa, A, Baa, Ba, B, Caa, Ca, C, with WR and NR as withdrawn and not rated. Standard & Poor's and Fitch assign bond credit ratings of AAA, AA, A, title: Credit rating agency text: is a highly concentrated industry, with the "Big Three" credit rating agencies controlling approximately 95% of the ratings business. Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's (S&P) together control 80% of the global market, and Fitch Ratings controls a further 15%. As of December 2012, S&P is the largest of the three, with 1.2 million outstanding ratings and 1,416 analysts and supervisors; Moody's has 1 million outstanding ratings and 1,252 analysts and supervisors; and Fitch is the smallest, with approximately 350,000 outstanding ratings, and is sometimes used as an alternative to S&P and Moody’s. The three largest agencies are not