Last week was a mixed one for rating activity as downgrades outnumbered upgrades but positive outlooks outnumbered negative ones. There were two rising stars, Antero Resources Corporation and Freeport-McMoRan Inc.--U.S. issuers from the oil and gas and mining sectors, respectively--bringing this year's total to 13. We added four new risky credits, all U.S. issuers and two from the telecommunications sector. One default last week brought this year's count to 57. Close to 60% have been U.S. issuers and we recently published our U.S. speculative-grade corporate default forecast of 4.5% by March 2025.