Revisiting Goldman's Abacus deal... Bank of America's $8.5 billion fine... Doc Eifrig is 21 for 21... Chinese car sales collapse... Increasing minimum wage in China... Another big tech IPO... Will the U.S. get downgraded to 'D'?...
Last April, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) targeted Goldman Sachs in a civil fraud case. The lawsuit alleged Goldman sold investors a synthetic collateralized debt obligation (CDO) linked to the performance of certain mortgages without disclosing that John Paulson's hedge fund, Paulson & Co., helped design the CDO (named Abacus) and was shorting it. As mortgage prices collapsed, the buyers of Abacus – including ACA Financial and German bank IKB – lost nearly $1 billion.
On July 15, 2010, Goldman settled with the SEC for $500 million. The bank neither admitted nor denied the allegations. It said the marketing materials for Abacus contained "incomplete" information.
The point of today's Digest is not the ethics of that case, but rather a prediction we made regarding the abundance of mortgage fraud leading up to the crisis and the subsequent lawsuits we would see.
The Goldman lawsuit involved synthetic CDOs. The investors weren't buying actual mortgage securities. They were agreeing to assume the risk of insuring mortgage bonds in exchange for annual insurance premiums. By definition, a synthetic CDO must have someone on the long and short side… Otherwise, it can't exist. Therefore, the buyers must have known another investor wanted to short the mortgages.
We referred to the Goldman lawsuit as "a warm-up." The "real fireworks," we proposed, would come when the SEC started investigating fraud surrounding actual mortgages (in particular the huge amount of fraud in mortgage underwriting between 2004 and 2007). Defrauding a German bank is one thing, but defrauding the U.S. government (in the form of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) is quite another. On July 16, 2010, we wrote...
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These vehicles [mortgage backed securities] were completely riddled with fraud and insider dealing. Then, almost half of them were sold to Fannie and Freddie, now owned by Uncle Sam. When you defraud the sovereign, watch out. We think the fines are going to get a lot bigger... S&A Digest, July 16, 2010. |
Today, Bank of America announced it would pay $8.5 billion to settle claims from investors who lost money on mortgage-backed securities they purchased before the crash. The dispute began last fall when a group of investors – including giants like BlackRock, MetLife, and PIMCO – alleged mortgages they purchased before the crisis from Countrywide Financial (which BOA bought in 2008 for $4 billion) were stuffed with loans that didn't meet the stated standards of quality of the borrower or the collateral. The investors also alleged Countrywide didn't keep accurate records of the loans. The settlement covers 530 separate mortgage securities with an original face value of $424 billion.
The $8.5 billion is more than Bank of America has earned since the crisis began in 2008. And BOA is taking another $7.5 billion charge on its books in the second quarter ($14 billion in total charges) to account for future liabilities from Fannie and Freddie.
The fines are getting a lot bigger (as we predicted)... And we bet there are more to come.
Compared to BOA's fine (which amounts to three years of earnings), the $500 million Goldman settlement was a pittance – a mere 14 days of trading profits.
You may wonder how Goldman makes so much money with its proprietary trading. Despite using 20 times leverage and trading in huge volumes, the bank manages to make money nearly every day – literally, the bank will go entire quarters without a daily trading loss.
For one, Goldman doesn't trade like you and me... The bank does pairs trades (buying one security and selling another). It sells options instead of buying them. It buys low-risk bonds near maturity. And Goldman has incredibly accurate options-pricing models that give it a wide margin of safety on trades. Goldman doesn't try to make double-digit returns on its trades. Instead, the bank wants small (1%) gains with almost zero risk.
How do we know so much about Goldman's "prop" trading? Well, we hired a guy who used to work on its trading desk. Dr. David Eifrig was one of the most successful traders on the Street in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He worked for Goldman Sachs in New York and London. Then, he worked for Chase and later Yamaichi – a top Japanese bank.
Eifrig traded in the glamor of Wall Street (he tired of the dubious ethics) for a career in medicine. But his love of the markets and his desire to share the trading secrets he learned with others brought him to us. As Porter tells the story...
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As Doc explained these strategies to me, I realized how perfect they were for people who are retired. A retired person needs income to live on. A short-term trading system that can produce small gains, quickly and safely, would be perfect for our audience, which is filled with retired investors. The more Doc and I talked over the years, the more excited he became about sharing his secrets with more people – especially folks like him, who are retired. |
Those conversations quickly turned into Doc's newsletter, Retirement Trader. He focuses on super-safe trades that will produce steady and consistent gains. Has Doc delivered on his promise? Since launching his advisory in April 2010, Doc has closed 21 positions – all winners. And the average annualized gain is 33.5%.
Let me repeat that... Doc is 21 for 21 with his closed trades over the past year and a half. And he's produced an average 33.5% return with little risk. The performance is astounding.
Even if you haven't imagined yourself as a trader, I'd urge you to give Doc's Retirement Trader a try. No other analyst on our staff is capable of producing such large, consistent, and safe returns. You can learn more about Retirement Trader here...
Porter dedicated the June 20 Digest to the short-China thesis. The reasons to short China are many – accounting fraud, government-controlled lending, and a real-estate glut, to name a few. Today, we add another to the list – declining auto sales.
Chinese auto and battery maker BYD (of which Warren Buffett owns 9.9%) announced today that profits fell 84% in the first quarter. Earnings fell to 266.7 million yuan in the quarter ended March 31 from 1.7 billion yuan during the same period a year earlier.
"The performance in the first quarter of 2011 dropped significantly, which was mainly due to a decline in the performance of the automobile business," BYD stated in a notice to the Hong Kong stock exchange. The company also noted a slowdown in sales of rechargeable batteries and cell phone parts.
Also from China... The Chinese government announced it will increase the country's minimum wage by an average annual rate of 13% over the next five years, according to the newspaper China Daily. This will help fuel domestic demand from China – not such a heavy dependence on exports. But it's also a sure sign of inflation.
Signs of a top... Another big tech IPO... Zynga, the developer of Facebook games like FarmVille and Texas HoldEm Poker, filed for an initial public offering (IPO) today. Zynga chose Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter for the offering, which will raise more than $1 billion and value the company at $20 billion, according to the newswire Reuters. That's twice what the Wall Street Journal reports Zynga shares fetched when they were sold to Venture Capital investors a few months ago..
Nitsan Hargil, an analyst at GreenCrest Capital Management, which focuses on pre-IPO private firms, said Zynga doesn't need the money from the IPO. In other words, the company's just taking advantage of a frothy market. And SharesPost, an exchange for privately held companies, values the firm at $15.4 billion.
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New 52-week highs (as of 6/28/11): McDonald's (MCD).
In today's mailbag, there are at least a few folks out there who pay their debts... Send your feedback to feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
"I am a recent subscriber and your latest (June 29) letter struck a chord. I am completely debt free. I do not owe a single penny to a single person. I am now concerned that this "new" socialism will destroy what I have so dilligently saved and invested. Keep the warning going loud and clear. The day of reckoning is fast approaching." – Paid-up subscriber David Atkin
"Here! Here! for Jim Cristopherson! How refreshing to hear someone take responsibility for his situation. It reminds me of my father, who 40 years ago was $50,000 in debt (a lot back then) due to my mother's medical bills. She spent the last two years of her life in hospitals and when she exceeded the medical insurance cap, my father paid the difference. I remember him borrowing money from friends and family to get by, and although money was very tight while I was growing up, my father eventually paid off all of those medical bills. Now a days people would not consider paying those obligations. Those memories made me the person that I am today. Jim Cristopherson – you will go far in life." – Paid-up subscriber Lynn Habrowski
Regards,
Sean Goldsmith
Baltimore, Maryland
June 29, 2011