Ten More Odds & Ends
I’m just trying to clean up old topics, so bear with me:
1) This blog is not ending because of my new job. Finacorp wants me to keep it going, and they may use the posts in PDF form for clients. Also, unlike my prior employer, Finacorp wants me to have a high degree of exposure, because it aids them. You may see me in more venues, which could include TV and radio.
2) In one sense, I had an unusually productive Saturday. I built two models — one for a critique of the PEG ratio, and one for a model of the Treasury yield curve. You will see articles on both of these, and I am really jazzed on both of them. It is not often that I get one impressive result in a day. Today I got two. I’ll give you one practical upshot for now, if you are an institutional bond investor: go long 10-year Treasuries and short 7-year. We are very near the historical wides. If you are like me, and can live with negative carry, dollar duration-weight the trade, so that you are immune to parallel yield curve shifts.
3) I didn’t read Barron’s, Forbes, or The Economist today, but I did read the Financial Analysts Journal. In it there were three articles that are worth a comment. There was an interesting article on fundamental indexation that comes close to my view on the topic. Fundamental indexation, when properly done, is nothing more than enhanced indexing with a value tilt. Will it make you more money than an ordinary index fund? Yes, it will, over a long enough period of time. Will it work every year? No. Is there one optimal way to fundamentally index? No. There is no one cofactor, or set of cofactors that optimally define value, if for no other reason than the accounting rules keep changing.
4) The second article went over the value of immediate annuities as risk reducers to retirees, something I commented on recently. The tweak here is buying annuities that start paying later in retirement, for example at 80 or 85, with the risk that if you die before then, you get nothing. Longevity insurance; a very good concept, but the execution is tough.
5) The third article was on Risk Management for Event-Driven Funds. Here’s my take: risk arb is like being a high yield bond manager. Anytime a deal is announced, you have to do a credit risk analysis:
- How likely is it that this deal will go through?
- How badly could I be hurt if it does not go through?
- Am I getting paid more than a junk bond with equivalent risk?
But the portfolio manager must ask some more questions:
- Are there any common factors in my risk arb book that could bite me? Sectors? Need for debt finance?
- What if deal financing terms go awry all at the same time? How will that affect the worst risks in my book?
- Am I getting paid more than a junk bond with equivalent risk? (Okay, it’s a repeat, but it deserves it.)
Risk arbs have been burned lately, with all of the deals that have been busted because financing is not available on easy terms. It’s tough but this happens. Most easy arbs tend to get overplayed before blowups happen. The lure of easy money brings out the worst in people, even institutional investors.
6) Naked Capitalism had an interesting post on GM. I made the following comment:
I took some criticism at RealMoney.com for writing things like this about GM, though the author here was a much better writer.
The thing is, there are enough levers here that GM can keep the debt ball in the air for some time, as can many of the financial guarantors, so long as they can make their interest payments.
The “Big 3″ lose vitality vs. Toyota and Honda each year — in the long run GM and Ford don’t make it. Perhaps after they go through bankruptcy, and shed liabilities to the PBGC, and issue new equity to the current unsecured bondholders, they can exist as smaller companies that have focus. Maybe Ford could be a division of Magna, and GM a division of Johnson Controls. At least then there would be competent management.
7) Barry Ritholtz had a good post called, 5 Historical Economic Crises and the U.S. The paper he cited went into five recent crises in the developed world, and how the current US situation stacks up against that. Here was my comment on one of the areas where the US situation did not seem so dire, that of the run-up in government debt:
On the last point about the increase in the debt, what is missed is that a lot of the government debt increase is hidden by the non-marketable Treasury bonds held by the entitlement programs. Add that in, and consider the unfunded promises made at the Federal, State, and municipal levels, and the debt increase on an accrual basis is staggering.
We do face real risks here. The rest of the world will not finance us in our own currency forever. Oh, one critical difference between the US and the 5 crises — we are the worlds reserve currency, for now.
8 ) I like Egan-Jones on corporate debt. They have quantitative models that follow contingent claims theory, and use market based factors to estimate likelihood and severity of default. They are now trying to do models for asset backed securities. Very different from what they are currently doing, and their corporate models will be no help. They will also find difficulties in getting the data, and few market-based signals that inform their corporate models. I wish them well, but they are entering a new line of business for which they have no existing tools to help them.
9) This article from Naked Capitalism pokes at the rating agencies, and the proposed reforms from the SEC. My view is this: the financial regulators need a model on credit risk. They need a common platform for all credit risks. They need one set of ratings that allow them to set capital levels for the institutions that they regulate, or they need to bar investments that cannot be rated adequately. The problem is not the rating agencies but the regulators. How do they properly set capital levels. They either have to use the rating agencies, or build internal ratings themselves. Given my experiences with the NAIC SVO, it is much better to use the rating agencies. They are more competent.
10) Finally, on Friday, a UBS report stirred the pot regarding non-borrowed reserves. You can see the H.3 report here. Both Caroline Baum of Bloomberg and Real Time Economics debunked the UBS piece. But it was simpler than that. The Fed published its own explanation at the time they put out the H.3 report. UBS did not include the effect of the new TAF. Whoops. Oh well, I make mistakes also. It’s just better to make mistakes when one doesn’t sound so certain.
Full disclosure: long MGA, HMC
February 11th, 20089:03 am at
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