Money and Finance
- The Yield Hunt - By Michael Lewitt
Anyone who does not understand that the price of every stock and every bond is being artificially altered by the fact that interest rates are being manipulated by the Federal Reserve should not be risking any money in the markets. Monetary policy has...
- Michael Lewis Asks Judge To Dismiss Libel Suit
Thanks to Lincoln for passing this along. Lawyers for Michael Lewis, the author of “Liar’s Poker” and “Moneyball,” asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit by a bond manager who claimed Lewis’s book about subprime mortgage investing, “The Big...
- Dalio Takes Hedge Crown From Soros
Ray Dalio has overtaken George Soros as the world’s most successful hedge fund manager after his Bridgewater Pure Alpha fund made $13.8bn for investors last year. The profits made by the Connecticut-based Pure Alpha – already the world’s biggest...
- Say Goodbye To Fannie And Freddie - By William Poole
Found via The Big Picture. THE Federal National Mortgage Association — known as Fannie Mae — and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation — Freddie Mac — were poorly structured from the time, 40 years ago, when they were set up as so-called...
- The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep The Bubble Going - By Jesse Eisinger And Jake Bernstein
In late 2005, the booming U.S. housing market seemed to be slowing. The Federal Reserve had begun raising interest rates. Subprime mortgage company shares were falling. Investors began to balk at buying complex mortgage securities. The housing bubble,...
Money and Finance
Big Long Is New Big Short as Bass Joins Subprime Bet
Investors who made some of the biggest profits from the 2007 bust in U.S. mortgages are once again in agreement. This time, they’re going long.
Hedge fund manager Kyle Bass, who made $500 million betting against subprime debt in the crash, is raising a fund to buy home loan securities. He’s joining Greg Lippmann, a former Deutsche Bank AG trader, and John Paulson, who made $15 billion in 2007, in betting on default prone mortgages. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and American International Group Inc. (AIG) have also emerged as buyers this year as trading more than doubled for non-agency mortgage notes.
The $1.1 trillion market for U.S. mortgage bonds without government-backing is joining a global rally in everything from stocks and commodities to company loans, as confidence grows that Europe’s sovereign debt crisis will be contained. Investors are speculating the riskiest mortgage securities are priced to withstand an economic slowdown and home price declines even as President Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve pursue policies to combat the six-year residential real-estate slump.
“You can end up, even using severe assumptions on things such as home prices and defaults, with a very high yield based on the prices that bonds are trading at,” Larry Penn, chief executive officer of Old Greenwich, Connecticut-based Ellington Financial LLC (EFC), said yesterday in a telephone interview. “Especially with interest rates this low, if you can buy something where you can end up with a double-digit yield under severe assumptions, that’s great.”
- The Yield Hunt - By Michael Lewitt
Anyone who does not understand that the price of every stock and every bond is being artificially altered by the fact that interest rates are being manipulated by the Federal Reserve should not be risking any money in the markets. Monetary policy has...
- Michael Lewis Asks Judge To Dismiss Libel Suit
Thanks to Lincoln for passing this along. Lawyers for Michael Lewis, the author of “Liar’s Poker” and “Moneyball,” asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit by a bond manager who claimed Lewis’s book about subprime mortgage investing, “The Big...
- Dalio Takes Hedge Crown From Soros
Ray Dalio has overtaken George Soros as the world’s most successful hedge fund manager after his Bridgewater Pure Alpha fund made $13.8bn for investors last year. The profits made by the Connecticut-based Pure Alpha – already the world’s biggest...
- Say Goodbye To Fannie And Freddie - By William Poole
Found via The Big Picture. THE Federal National Mortgage Association — known as Fannie Mae — and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation — Freddie Mac — were poorly structured from the time, 40 years ago, when they were set up as so-called...
- The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep The Bubble Going - By Jesse Eisinger And Jake Bernstein
In late 2005, the booming U.S. housing market seemed to be slowing. The Federal Reserve had begun raising interest rates. Subprime mortgage company shares were falling. Investors began to balk at buying complex mortgage securities. The housing bubble,...