Market turmoil is still quite fascinating to me and I still believe the current environment will be one for the history books and I’m still trying to take as much as I can from this learning experience.
My professional work experience is in fixed income. For two years, I was very “plugged in” to the markets [...]
Another 16 hour day! Phew! Kick @$$!!
Anyway, although I should be sleeping, I decided to compose another stream of consciousness over at NP.
“In my opinion, the CDO market is history.”
[From RRP:]Eric, this is the kind of stuff that you say that drives me nuts.
Come on. Admit it. This is exactly the worry that has driven [...]
My invitation to move some of the discussion here to avoid flooding the thread “Discount Rate” on NP so far has not been taken advantage of so I just left the following comment:
[From RRP:]First of all, best wishes to your daughter on her birthday. One of the benefits of living in Southern California is close [...]
What a week!! I certainly picked a good time to start a new job in structured finance. It’s only my first week and I’ve already had two 16 hour days where I was in the office until after midnight
Actually, I love it! I love the intensity and love pushing myself. Reminds me of [...]
It may sound a bit strange, but I was maintaining a blog on my prior employer’s intranet. If you knew the place, you might agree it actually makes sense. A massive asset management firm struggling to maintain effective communication between analysts and portfolio managers. Email and hard copies of research were becoming ineffective (in my [...]
This is bound to end up badly.
From the Wall Street Journal:
Seeking Hidden Losses, Regulators Comb Books Of Wall Street Titans
Here are some excerpts (my emphasis in bold):
The SEC is looking into whether Wall Street brokers are using consistent methods to calculate the value of subprime-mortgage assets in their own inventory, as well as assets held [...]
I’m suffering a bit from information overload after just getting back from a too-short visit to HK. In response rrp dude’s comment on SFAS 140, I mentioned that some of my old colleagues talked quite a bit about the impending introduction of “fair value accounting”. I won’t pretend to have read it yet (drowning!), but [...]
Again, the title is not a fact, but a premonition. Since my last premonition (sadly) came true, maybe there is something to this voodoo analysis after all.
One aspect of the subprime CDO and subsequent contagion that hasn’t gotten much attention (yet) is the influence and impact of risk management systems. In one of my first [...]
The interesting discussion continues over on Nuclear Phynance. Here is my latest:
Hi Cheng,
My opinion on CDS has nothing to do with what is going on in subprime. In my opinion, subprime is just the first “zit” appearing on the face of a pubescent teen’s face who has been eating nothing but junk food for [...]
This S&P article via Calculated Risk
Ratings On 75 U.S. Synthetic CDOs Of ABS Lowered Following U.S. Subprime RMBS Review
Of the 92 ratings actions listed in the S&P article, it looks to me like
15 of them were AAA (3 downgraded to A),
27 of them were AA (4 downgraded to BBB),
30 of them were A
20 of [...]
