• Signs of Health in the Credit Markets
    Posted by on May 7th, 2008 at 10:42 am

    From Bloomberg:

    In the course of a three-and-a-half- hour dinner at Manhattan’s Smith & Wollensky steakhouse, Emil Assentato went from also-ran to the top of the world’s fastest-growing credit market.
    By the end of the meal, Assentato, 58, the head of Cie. Financiere Tradition’s North American securities business who races cars on weekends, had persuaded more than a dozen credit- derivatives brokers led by Donald Fewer and Michael Babcock to defect from rival GFI Group Inc., court documents allege. In the end, 21 would leave for Tradition with the promise of $130 million over three to five years, about $6 million apiece.
    Tradition’s attack did more than decimate GFI’s credit- default swap desk. It also raised the bar for the “extraordinary” pay commanded by derivatives brokers who match buyers and sellers between banks, according to affidavits filed by New York-based GFI in a suit against Tradition. As Wall Street buckles under the biggest credit-market losses in history, brokerage firms are seeking to tap the $10 billion of fees generated by middlemen, who spend as much as $500 million a year entertaining traders with strippers, football games and evenings at trendy Manhattan bars, based on court records and interviews with industry officials.

  • Harry & David’s Withdraws IPO
    Posted by on May 7th, 2008 at 10:37 am

    Another victim of the stock market, Harry & David’s has withdrawn its IPO due to “market conditions.” Although the market has improved considerably over the past two months.

  • Looking at Inflation
    Posted by on May 7th, 2008 at 9:37 am

    In today’s NYT, David Leonhardt makes some interesting points about inflation. The things that are rising in price and the ones we pay most attention to. The ones that are flat or falling, we tend to ignore.

    There is also something particular to inflation that aggravates loss aversion. Price increases are obvious. But price declines are often hidden. The cost of an item stays about the same for years, while everything else gets more expensive and nominal incomes rise.
    When you dig into the Consumer Price Index, you start to realize just how many things fall into this category. The price of major appliances has been flat over the last year. Furniture is 1 percent less expensive. A decade ago, a basic four-door Toyota Corolla LE cost $16,018, according to the company. The 2009 basic model costs $16,650, and it’s a safer, more powerful, more fuel-efficient car than its predecessor.
    To top it all off, most people don’t buy any of these items very often. “People tend to remember things they do frequently,” says Stephen Cecchetti, an economist at Brandeis University who studies inflation. “And what do you buy more frequently than gas and food?”
    But combine the less noticeable trends with some true price declines, like a 5 percent drop in women’s clothing over the last year, and an inflation rate of 4 percent starts to seem more reasonable. Inflation really has gotten worse recently — it was only 2 percent a year and a half ago — but it’s not as bad as it feels.

    The whole idea of trying to measure inflation is a very difficult task. The reason is that if, say, chicken rises more than beef, consumers will start eating more beef and less chicken. In other words, as prices change, the weighting for each grouping changes.

  • The World’s First Billion Dollar Home
    Posted by on May 6th, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    Pretty sweet.
    ambanihome_426w.jpg

  • Shorting Puts
    Posted by on May 6th, 2008 at 10:25 am

    I’ve always thought that shorting puts is a fascinating options strategy. A few years ago, I edited a book on the topic. Here’s part of the intro:

    It then occurred to me that there is a great way to acquire stocks without trading what you’ve got or using borrowed funds. Simply stated, the method involves the sale of long-term options on highly rated companies, using the premiums received to further your investment program. There is no interest paid on the funds received; the funds never have to be repaid (because they have not been borrowed); and the equity requirements needed to do this are much lower than those for regular margin buying. Although I adapted and perfected this technique to suit my own needs and situation, it can be used by any investor who has built up some measure of equity and would like to acquire additional stocks without contributing additional capital. As we shall see later, the potential benefits far outweigh any incremental risks, especially when appropriate hedges and proper safeguards are incorporated.
    What makes this technique so effective is that it exploits the fact that option prices do not reflect the expected long-term growth rates of the underlying equities. The reason for this is that standard option pricing formulas, used by option traders everywhere, do not incorporate this variable. With short-term options, this doesn’t matter. With long-term options, however, this oversight often leads the market to overvalue premiums. Taking advantage of this mispricing is the foundation of my strategy.
    I have been using this technique for the past four years-very cautiously at first, because of the newness of these long-term options (they were only invented in 1990) and the almost complete lack of information regarding their safety and potential. It was this lack of analysis that led me to start my own research into the realm of long-term equity options. Having determined their relative risk/reward ratio, I am now very comfortable generating several thousand dollars a month in premiums which I use to add to my stock positions. I am often told that what I am doing is much akin to what a fire or hazard insurance company does, generating premiums and paying claims as they arise. A better analogy might be to a title insurance company, for with proper research, claims should rarely occur.

    Now I learn that Warren Buffett is using the same strategy:

    Buffett arranged his multibillion-dollar positions by selling puts on these indexes. Berkshire will only have to make payments if the respective indexes fall below the levels they were issued at. “In the meantime, the premiums we have received are ours to invest freely,” Buffett says in the quarterly report. At the end of 2007, the conglomerate had $4.5 billion in premiums and $4.6 billion in liabilities.
    Berkshire has continued to enlarge its position. In the first quarter, it increased premiums by 8.5%, or $383 million, by selling more puts, and increased its liability by 34.8% to $6.2 billion. Berkshire recorded a first-quarter loss on the contracts of $1.2 billion.
    The indexes Buffett is bullish on haven’t fared well in the past year, given the turmoil in the credit markets. Over the last 12 months, the S&P 500 has fallen 7.9%, the FTSE dropped 4.1%, the Euro Stoxx is down 12.1% and the Nikkei has plunged 19.2%. His positions reveal that he is confident that the European, Asian and U.S. markets will move far higher in next 10 years and beyond.
    Buffett warned that Berkshire’s earnings may “swing widely because of the accounting regulations that govern the reporting of derivatives contracts,” but that “that these contracts will prove profitable over the 15- to 20-year periods they cover, even if we exclude the investment income we can expect to earn on the $4.9 billion that we hold.” Buffett did not disclose the exact size of this global bet, only remarking that “we’re talking billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars of these things.”

  • Morgan Stanley Is Being Sued Over James Brown’s Estate
    Posted by on May 6th, 2008 at 10:19 am

    How can you not like this story?

    Brown’s estate has been at the centre of legal controversy. The 16-month scrap over his money has included allegations of embezzlement by some of his managers, wives, partners and offspring, as well as a fight over the veracity of the will.
    It was drawn up by a lawyer who is serving 30 years in jail for murdering a strip-club dancer.
    Two court-appointed trustees of Brown’s estate filed a lawsuit this week against Morgan Stanley at a court in South Carolina, the singer’s home state.
    In court papers, the trustees allege that Joseph Lizzio, a Morgan Stanley banker who continues to work for the Wall Street group, breached his fiduciary duty to his client by failing to check with Brown whether an employee was allowed to withdraw funds from his account.

  • Commodity Prices in Historical Perspective
    Posted by on May 6th, 2008 at 10:06 am

    Here’s an interesting report on commodity prices from Wachovia. They point out that surges in commodity prices are fairly common. In fact, that latest rally pales in comparison to some recent rallies. The report also includes the CRB Index adjusted for inflation (Exhibit 2), a chart I’ve run a few times here. Over the long haul, commodity prices have consistently underperformed inflation.

  • Best Lede I’ve Read Today
    Posted by on May 5th, 2008 at 3:12 pm

    From Reuters:

    At least two analysts said Bank of America will likely lower its purchase price for Countrywide Financial , with Friedman, Billings Ramsey analyst saying the bank may bring down its deal price to the $0 to $2 level or completely walk away from the deal.

    I like that: They’re lowering their offer to the $0 level. Didn’t that also happen in Godfather 2?

  • How Much Not to Have Tea With Him
    Posted by on May 5th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    From Reuters:

    How would you like a film role with Johnny Depp, tea with Alan Greenspan or tennis lessons from Andre Agassi?
    It’s all up for sale in an online auction to benefit the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, a human rights advocacy group.
    Tea with Greenspan and his wife, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell, was going for $11,000, according to the Web site here. Bidding ends on May 7.
    Last year tea with Greenspan went for $45,000, promoters of the event said. No word on whether the winner received investment tips.

    If their home is in foreclosure, then yes, they probably did get investment advice.
    Here’s the page to place a bid.

  • RIP: Robert Vesco
    Posted by on May 5th, 2008 at 11:57 am

    Robert Vesco, one of the great financial swindlers, is dead. Given that it’s Vesco, I guess I should say that he’s allegedly dead. It’s takes a real genius to flee to Cuba. Then get arrested in Cuba for double-crossing Castro.

    If Mr. Vesco indeed eluded the American authorities until his final day, it was the fitting end to his nearly four decades on the run. He was wanted for, among other things, bilking some $200 million from credulous investors in the 1970s, making an illegal contribution to Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 presidential campaign and trying to arrange a deal during the Carter administration to let Libya buy American planes in exchange for bribes to United States officials.
    Mr. Vesco last made the news a decade ago when he was sentenced to prison in Cuba, where he had taken sanctuary, for a financial scheme. He emerged in recent years and lived a quiet life in Havana until he contracted lung cancer. After about a week in a hospital, friends say, he died and was buried in an unmarked grave.
    Given the controversial nature of the man, none of his friends dared be identified for fear of running afoul of the Cuban authorities. While word of Mr. Vesco’s death could be the final ruse of a 72-year-old modern-day buccaneer who had every reason to drop off the radar, it would have to be an elaborate one.