For those of you who are relatively new to the complexities involved in the pricing of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), this Financial Times article, “Worries grow about the true value of repackaged debt,” gives a good overview. Since the article is lengthy, and the first part covers largely familiar ground, I’ve excerpted the second half. […]
Read more...By way of background, Bill Gross is something of a legend in the fixed income world. He founded Pimco, one of the biggest and most highly respected fixed income firms, with nearly $700 billion under management. Gross is also its chief investment officer and is considered very savvy (and as important for the purposes of […]
Read more...Credit Slips highlighted a recent Hudson Institute paper by Joseph Mason and Joshua Rosner, “Where Did the Risk Go? How Misapplied Bond Ratings Cause Mortgage Backed Securities and Collateralized Debt Obligation Market Disruptions.” It’s an excellent piece of work, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand more about the risks of mortgage […]
Read more...The Wall Street Journal, in “Bear’s Stock is Acting Like It’s Name,” adds surprisingly little of substance to what’s already been reported on Bloomberg (see here and here), but the story’s downer tone is the last thing Bear needs at this juncture. One element that has been missing from the mot press coverage but picked […]
Read more...By happenstance, I came across a document, “Fixed Income Overview” from a May 29, 2007 Bear Stearns Investor Day presentation by Jeff Mayer, Co-Head of Global Fixed Income, and Tom Marano, Global Head of Mortgages and Asset Backed Securities on the Bear Stearns website. It’s a fascinating bit of reading and some parts are particularly […]
Read more...We had wanted to write about the role of models and more important, model assumptions in the ongoing Bear Stearns hedge fund debacle, and Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times, in her story, “When Models Misbehave,” provided some useful intelligence. With all due respect to Morgenson, while she touches on some dimensions of the […]
Read more...In case you missed it, the US stock market was rattled by the continuing aftershocks of the Bear Stearns subprime-related hedge fund fallout, with the Dow down 185, and Bear itself was down in line with the Dow (both fell 1.4%, although Bear was up slightly in the aftermarket at this hour). Now the odd […]
Read more...The Economist takes a detached, often ironic, tone in its articles. So when one reads a piece that exudes worry, as this week’s “Bearish Turns” does, it’s noteworthy. The piece recites a litany of likely developments in the credit markets, all negative: the indeterminate state of the Bear Stearns subprime hedge funds; the near-certainty of […]
Read more...It continues to be lively on the Bear Sterns front. As readers doubtless know, two Bear Stearns sponsored hedge funds run by Ralph Cioffi that focused on subprimes had trouble meeting margin calls and went into liquidation. On the one hand, the Wall Street Journal appears not to be putting it on the first page […]
Read more...In a MarketWatch story that was ostensibly about the continuing saga of the Bear Stearns hedge fund implosion comes a juicy tidbit about the composition of subprime loans. It turns out half weren’t even for housing purchases but to refinance other debt: Subprime loans are made to less credit-worthy borrowers at higher rates. It’s a […]
Read more...The Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal give complementary updates on the unraveling of the Bear Stearns subprime hedge funds, the larger of which was the High Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund. Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank put up over $1 billion in assets seized from the funds for sale today. Some […]
Read more...In recent years, financial services firms have become increasingly adept at the game of “pin the liability on the bagholder.” Wall Street players structure complicated new products and seem peculiarly able to strip a disproportionate share of the economic value out as up-front fees. I say “peculiarly” simply because investors buy this stuff, even the […]
Read more...One of New York’s features is its acute housing cycle, a function of the local economy’s dependence on Wall Street. So the sounds of pain coming from real estate professionals are not unfamiliar. A point occurs in every cycle where the brokers, perennial optimists, can no longer deny how bad things are. It’s partly because […]
Read more...Marc Faber, who likes a colorful turn of phrase, has a sobering piece in the Financial Times, “Market insight: Beware the driving forces behind surging asset prices.” He looks at the symptom of pervasive asset bubbles (at least until US housing started unravelling) and traces it back to rapid money supply growth, which produced the […]
Read more...I know we are in the midst of a classic pattern, but it is still mystifying to watch it operate. At the end of a cycle, bonds start to decline in price before the equity market starts to fall. One would think that this sequence was sufficiently well established that the time lag between the […]
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