It's a bit gutsy to ask someone who casually drops a CDS valuation formula into a conversation to justify themselves against an Investopedia article, as if a re

It's a bit gutsy to ask someone who casually drops a CDS valuation formula into a conversation to justify themselves against an Investopedia article, as if a retail-oriented content farm is the definitive resource on finance. To answer your question, "idiosyncratic risk" in this context means that an individual company might have problems that don't broadly apply to the rest of its industry. For example Credit Suisse might have management that is bad at running a bank, leading to repeated investment losses and regulatory actions well beyond what's normal for big multinational banks. Look at the CS balance sheets over the past few years, or its stock price and PE ratio, or hell just Google "Credit Suisse books loss" and look at how many times they tried to stick their fingers in the wrong cookie jar. They got hit by the Hwang thing, they got hit by Greensill, and apparently they can't even accurately report how much money they're making (losing). I wouldn't want to have any position on their equity either.