A good article in the American Prospect by Barbara Dreyfus gives an overview of the state of play in the hedge fund industry and reviews the causes (considerable) for concern. The article is very much for the generalist reader and misses some points that are important (for example, the role of leverage in most hedge […]
Read more...An article, “Better Deeds,” by Doug Smith at Slate tells us that, contrary to popular opinion, one group of subprime mortgage lenders has done well with the product and is experiencing default rates comparable to that of prime mortgages. And no, they aren’t seeing rising arrearages either (generally speaking, mortgage defaults and foreclosures track the […]
Read more...We have mentioned before that the CDO market, a dark, murky, but rapidly growing part of the financial markets, is looking dodgier by the day. A brief primer: CDOs resemble other structured credits, like mortgage backed securities, in that they are structured into tranches of varying credit quality and maturities. The top tier is often […]
Read more...When the story broke of trouble at a Bear Stearns hedge fund, the High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund, that led it to auction $4 billion of its holdings to raise cash, we speculated that this might wind up being the beginning of a liquidation. That scenario now appears likely. The Wall Street Journal […]
Read more...Many moons ago, we lamented, “Where Has the (Perception of) Risk Gone?” Even though the markets got religion for a couple of weeks after the global downdraft of February 27, things returned surprisingly quickly to status quo ante. Over the last week and a half, we seem to have had a mini rerun of February […]
Read more...The funny thing about the oft-repeated George Santayana saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” is that it is generally applied to historical events, like the folly of launching an attack on Russia that might extend into the winter. But these days, in the financial markets, with so many people […]
Read more...Martin Wolf, in a Financial Times comment, “Villains and victims of global capital flows,” looks at the two competing theories of the causes of global imbalances. One is the savings glut story, in which parsimonious Chinese and Japanese force the US to consume to keep the world from falling into recession. This view is favored […]
Read more...Even though the US Treasury market has taken a nasty downward move through an important level that many participants see as the beginning of a bear market in bonds (which will inevitably lead to a bear market in equities), actors in other sectors of the financial markets seem remarkably sanguine, at least so far. Is […]
Read more...What the Fed and the Treasury would like take away, the SEC gives, and then some. The Fed is (finally) getting worried about systemic risk, and in this Financial Times story, the Treasury Department (which usually stays clear of this sort of thing, generally deferring to the Fed) says that it is concerned about hedge […]
Read more...Readers may notice today that we are a bit heavy on Financial Times stories. In part, that’s because the FT has a healthy respect for the fixed income markets. Political consultant and pretty scary guy James Carville once remarked, “I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President […]
Read more...Michael Panzner pointed us to a Bloomberg column by John Berry, “Fed Officials Fret Another `Russia’ May Occur.” Frankly, we are delighted to read this. It is high time the Fed woke up and took stock of the excesses taking place in virtually every asset class. Not only do we have very high liquidity, asset […]
Read more...A very good post by Roger Ehrenberg at Seeking Alpha, “OTC Derivatives: Risks and Rewards,” which explains that the over the counter derivatives business poses a risk, perhaps a significant risk, to the Wall Street community. For the benefit of readers, over the counter derivatives are those that are not traded on an exchange. Recognize […]
Read more...One of Wall Street’s ongoing pin-the-liability-on-the-chump exercises is finding purchasers for the riskiest (often called “equity”) tranches of asset backed securities and CDOs, which in the trade are called “nuclear waste.” They come about because the attractive upper tranches get priority in the distribution of cash flow and may also be overcollateralized or credit enhanced. […]
Read more...Thanks to Felix Salmon for pointing this tidbit out to us. Due to leveraged buyouts (notice how the press has started to use that 1980s term once again?), there has been a surge in junk issuance. But since below-investment-grade issuers pay only about 180 basis points more than investment grade issuers, there is virtually no […]
Read more...We have Mark Thoma to thank for pointing out this story on research by Nancy Wallace at the Haas School (UC Berkeley). She found serious deficiencies in the risk models used by banks to evaluate residential mortgages and predicted widespread problems a year before the subprime meltdown. She and her colleagues have just completed a […]
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