...December 18, 2019 NEW YORK (S&P Global Ratings) Dec. 18, 2019--S&P Global Ratings today said it has taken various actions on its fund credit quality ratings (FCQRs) and fund volatility ratings (FVRs) on 79 iShares fixed-income exchange-traded funds (ETFs). (See the Ratings List.) Following our review of the iShares ETFs under our FCQR criteria, we raised nine ratings, lowered two, and affirmed 68. In general, changes in FCQRs, whether upgrades or downgrades, were driven by changes in the constituents of the underlying indices and, consequently, gradual changes in the weighted average credit risk of the ETFs' portfolio of investments. The components of the underlying indices typically change over time depending on market conditions and issuance trends. We raised our FCQRs on six iShares iBonds ETFs, which are a collection of bond funds that hold a diversified portfolio of bonds with similar maturity dates and have a final payout in their maturity year. As these term portfolios move toward...
