Category Archives: Risk and risk management

The Real Failure of Controls at Societe Generale

Disclosure (or apparent disclousues, who knows if we will ever learn the true story) of how equity derivatives trader Jerome Kerviel caused the biggest trading loss in banking history continues to dribble out. Today, Bloomberg in “Societe Generale Says Trader Built Up Positions of EU50 Billion,” gives more detail on how the trader caused so […]

Michael Lewis’ Theory of Why Goldman Got It Right

Michael Lewis, of Liar’s Poker fame, gives an elegant explanation of why Goldman got its subprime position right when everyone else on the Street was disastrously wrong. And I mean elegant in the mathematical sense: it fits known facts and has few moving parts. As Lewis tells it, Goldman did not use the largely impotent […]

The Monoline/Credit Default Swap Nexus (Not for the Fainthearted)

After bond fund giant Pimco’s Bill Gross gave a back-of-the-envelope estimate of a possible $250 billion in losses resulting from the impact of deteriorating corporate credit and bond defaults on the $45 trillion (notional amount) credit default swaps market, other commentators have been making improved (but still quick and dirty) calculations. One interesting effort appears […]

Wolfgang Munchau on the Risks of Credit Default Swaps

Wolfgang Munchau provides nice succinct overview of some of the recent debate surrounding a source of financial system risk that has suddenly captured the popular imagination: credit default swaps. For those new to the concept, credit default swaps are effectively insurance. A protection seller (think insurer) takes the risk of default on a reference entity […]

So How Did Morgan Stanley Lose That $9.4 Billion?

I usually rely on public information, but I’ve had two not-so-public (well, one is public but second-hand) data points converge, and they are consistent with the MSM information on the matter at hand, namely, how Morgan Stanley came to post a $9.4 billion loss on the actions of one trading desk, which in turn led […]

A Riveting Disclosure in the $1 Billion Swiss Re Writedown

These days, a mere $1 billion writedown is such an penny-ante event as to not merit much interest. Indeed, what made the fact that Swiss Reinsurance Co., the world’s biggest reinsurer, lost that much on mortgage related derivatives noteworthy was the fact that it was engaged in that activity at all. It turns out the […]

News Flash: Ben Stein Says Something Intelligent

Before I raise your expectations unduly, I am not saying that Ben Stein’s entire “Everybody’s Business” column today is intelligent. However, this week’s piece, “It’s Time to Act Like Grown-Ups,” had some sensible moments, and I want to give Stein his due on those infrequent occasions when it is merited. I am not parsing the […]

Investment Banks May Face $100 Billion in Writedowns

Royal Bank of Scotland estimated that investment banks will be forced to take $100 billion in writedowns as a result of the implementation of new accounting rules that restrict their latitude in valuing financial instruments that cannot be priced readily. Citigroup alone has $135 billion in so-called Level 3 assets, and that number rose by […]

A Particularly Choice Citigroup Disclosure

Various analysts and reporters took keen interest in Citigroup SEC filing Tuesday that revealed that the bank had deployed $7.6 billion of a total $10 billion liquidity facility to assist its floundering structured investment vehciles (SIVs), but stated it does not believe it has to consolidate the SIVs. CreditSights estimated that Citi’s losses on asset […]

New York Times on Merrill’s Risk Management

The New York Times has an odd piece today, “Where Did the Buck Stop at Merrill?” which seeks to determine whether the unexpectedly $8.4 billion third-quarter writeoff was not just former CEO Stanley O”Neal’s failing, but also one of Merrill’s board. Another shoe may be about to drop, since the Wall Street Journal claimed that […]

The Role of Emotion in Risk Assessment

PhysOrg.com reports on the results of a study funded by the National Science Foundation which looked into why people decide to live in homes in risky places, like coastal Florida and areas where wildfires are common. Answer: “the emotional benefits interfere with their ability to assess the risks.” What is surprising it that this finding […]

More Doubts About Hedge Fund Performance

Hedge funds charge vastly higher fees than other money managers because they allegedly deliver better investment returns. Yet when you look at most hedge fund indices, they don’t look much better, and are sometimes worse than simple long-only strategies. And remember these indices almost certainly overstate performance, since they exhibit what is called “survivorship bias.” […]

Nicholas Taleb Attacks the "Pseudo-Science" of Modern Finance

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, seasoned trader and risk manager, and author of the provocative and well regarded book Black Swans, today in the Financial Times takes on the high priesthood of modern finance. He argues that modern portfolio theory and many of its offspring, such as the Black-Scholes option pricing model and the capital asset pricing […]

Securitization Ain’t What It Used to Be

A wry and informative article, “Slicing and dicing risk rebounds on banks,” by John Dizard at the Financial Times tells us that newfangled investment vehicles considered to be a good thing because it moved risk assumption away from large banks (and therefore ultimately central banks) to the wealthy. But Dizard explains the rich were too […]

Gillian Tett: The Perverse Effects of Value-at-Risk Models

In an interesting bit of synchronicity, the role of value-at-risk models has come into focus in the last couple of days. By way of background, VAR is a widely used risk management technique. It defines the level of risk by assessing the most one might lose in a set time period (typically one day) with […]