Outside experts hired by Wells Fargo to pour through its books are reportedly shocked at the bank’s exposure to derivatives trades it took on when it acquired Wachovia may trigger huge losses at the bank, Teri Buhl reports at BankImplode.com
It appears that Wachovia wrote credit default swaps on the junior tranches of commercial mortgage backed securities it was selling, which means that it is on the hook for losses in the riskiest CMBS tranches it sold. Wells itself might not even know the size of its exposure, Buhl reports.
From Buhl:
According to sources currently working out these loans at Wells Fargo when selling tranches of commercial mortgage-backed securities below the super senior tranche, Wachovia promised to pay the buyer’s risk premium by writing credit default swap contracts against these subordinate bonds. Should the junior tranches eventually default, then the bank is on the hook. Dan Alpert of Westwood Capital says these were practices that he saw going on in the market at large.
Alpert says in reference to how he saw CMBS trades get done, “These guys would say ‘We’ll just take back that silly credit risk you’re worried about.’ Of course that was a nice increase to earnings when they got the security sold. The bank made money at the time.”
Buhl points out that investors might be caught off-guard if Wells has to start paying out on the swaps it sold. Wells, like most banks, almost certainly holds the credit default swap liabilities off balance sheet and most likely does not recognize them as a loss until they actually have to pay, Buhl writes. Wells says it carefully monitors its derivatives exposure. "We have provided extensive transparent disclosures on our derivatives in our 2008 annual report beginning on page 132,” Wells says.
Here’s Wells own calculation of its derivatives exposure as of the day it closed the Wachovia deal.
But it seems fair to wonder if Wells really understood all of the derivatives exposure it took on when it acquired Wachovia. Buhl wonders if Wells really has enough capital set aside to handle the derivatives liability.
…So could Wells really have enough capital to handle the liability of credit
Goldman Sachs has issued a memo to clients blasting the Wall Street Journal’s article on the "huddles."
"A ‘huddle’ is not a forum for sharing stock or sector ‘tips,’" Goldman writes in a memo first published by Bess Levin at DealBreaker.
It seems very clear that Goldman clients--the ones not invited to huddles--must have been raising questions about why they were being left out. The most damaging aspect of the article was the possibility that some "most-favored" clients were getting information or advice that conflicted with what Goldman was telling ordinary clients got. For example, clients coaxed to go long asset backed securities might be peeved if there was some secret Goldman huddle where top clients were told to short.
Goldman is now on the record denying that this occurs.
So remember how we wondered whether Frank DiPascali was getting enough from the feds for his cooperation in the investigation in Bernie Madoff’s scam?
Well, it turns out that part of his deal is having the feds overlook his history of taking illegal drugs, carrying an illegal firearm right up until the time of his arrest and reporting that he had no income during a year when he earned $4 billion.
According to documents released yesterday by federal prosecutors, DiPascali, the former CFO at Madoff’s investment firm, agreed to spill the beans about Madoff in part to guarantee the feds didn’t go after him on "use of controlled substances prior to 1992" and for possessing illegal firearms up until last Friday.
The 52-year-old Queens native, who is cooperating with prosecutors in the Madoff scandal, is also avoiding criminal prosecution for evading taxes, the documents show.
Indeed, DiPascali cheated Uncle Sam out of several million dollars between 2002 and 2007 through a number of shady schemes, including depositing his income into accounts under other names and filing false returns. In 2006, for example, DiPascali reported zero dollars in taxable income even though he actually earned $4 million that year. He also reported no income in 2002 and 2005.
Eliot Spitzer was kind enough to sit down with me on TechTicker last week. This was the second time I had ever met him--the first being not when he was pulverizing me as Attorney General, but later, when I was writing for Slate Magazine and he was running for Governor. It was the first time I’d ever talked to him about any of this stuff.
It was a very interesting half-hour to say the least. We’ll post a couple of clips here…
As many of you know, my career as a top-ranked Wall Street research analyst ended in 2002, when a then-little-known New York Attorney General named Eliot Spitzer accused me and my firm (Merrill Lynch) of producing bogus research to curry favor with banking clients.
Merrill denied and then settled the charges, but Spitzer’s allegations resonated with furious investors who had lost their shirts in the market crash. Spitzer soon expanded his research investigation to other firms, eventually forcing the industry into a "Global Settlement" that changed the longstanding relationship between bankers and research analysts. I, meanwhile, got tossed out of the securities industry.
For Spitzer, the research investigation was the first of many. Over the next few years, as the newly crowned ‘Sheriff of Wall Street’, he launched similarly aggressive investigations into mutual funds, insurance, and other industries, often exposing shady practices that had come to be regarded as business as usual.
By 2003, when I was taking the first steps toward rebuilding my shattered reputation--writing commentary for Slate, The Atlantic, and other publications--Eliot Spitzer’s fame and success had soared. In 2004, he was re-elected as Attorney General. In 2006, he was elected Governor of New York in a landslide. By 2007, he was frequently mentioned as a possible future presidential candidate.
Meanwhile, by the spring of last year, thanks to the generous second chance many people had given me, I was beginning to rebuild some credibility. TechTicker was doing well, The Business Insider was growing rapidly, and Valleywag had even taken to referring to me as "the disgraced analyst everyone listens to."
Then, one day, I got a note from a New York Times reporter saying I should check out the lead story about Eliot Spitzer that had just hit their front page. I checked it out--and my
It looks as though this whole Flash trading controversy may have a simple, private sector solution, not requiring action by the SEC.
The NASDAQ says it’s eliminating Flash trading as of Sept 1. Flash trading allows some traders to get a sneek peek at big oders before others — defenders argue that it’s logical to give "local" traders, who are set up nearby a look at trades before they go out to the broader market. Either way, our guess is that this won’t prove to be a big deal, though it may cream some hedge funds.
If Flash orders had a significant impact on liquidity, the NASDAQ wouldn’t be doing this voluntarily.
A paper has been going around that describes a startling new world of high-velocity computerized trading that causes volume and volatility to soar and costs ordinary investors billions of dollars.
The paper, Toxic Equity Trading On Wall Street, appears to have been published late last year by Sal Arnuk and Joseph Saluzzi from a firm called Themis Trading. (One word of caution: We have not yet verified a single assertion made in the paper, and we had not heard of Themis Trading. We would be grateful if those of you with insight into this would help us understand the real facts here.)
The paper is embedded below (you can also download it at Themis’s web site). Here, in brief, is the world it describes:
Many trading orders these days are executed by computers. Like human traders, the computers break big orders into small chunks (say, 100 or 500 shares) and then match them with orders on electronic stock exchanges. The reason the orders are broken into chunks is so they won’t move the market too much. Stock trading is relatively illiquid, and big orders can drive the price of a stock sharply up or down. Since the dawn of Wall Street time, clever traders have tried to hide the amount of stock they ultimately want to buy or sell to avoid having their own orders move the market sharply against them.
In recent years, such "algorithmic" electronic trading execution has grown in popularity, and a number of electronic trading strategies have sprung up to exploit it.
In one of these strategies, called "liquidity rebate trading," a program analyzes the incoming order flow on an electronic exchange to try to spot a big institutional order that is just hitting the market (apparently this is relatively easy to do). The program then front-runs the order by modestly outbidding the institution for the stock and then turning around and selling it to the institution at a higher price than the institution would have otherwise paid.
Front-running is an age-old cheating technique: A trading firm gets a big order from a client and, before it executes it, buys some of the same stock for itself. Front-running is, in fact, what many Wall Street insiders thought Bernie Madoff was doing before they discovered he…
The upcoming issue of Vanity Fair portrays the lives of Bernard Madoff’s sons and asks "Did The Sons Know?" Mark and Andrew Madoff feel betrayed by their father, David Margolick writes for Vanity Fair. Page Six today highlights some of the juicier details:
Blame mom as an enabler. Andrew and Mark Madoff aren’t speaking with their mother Ruth Madoff. They don’t suspect that she was involved with the scheme, but they believe her tendency to side with Bernie regardless of the the circumstances enabled his crimes.
Avoding using the Madoff name. Andrew Madoff and his fiance Catherine Hooper (pictured with a fish, above) use her name when making restaurant reservation. Andrew’s estranged wife, Deborah, orders groceries from FreshDirect using her maiden name.
Excessive self-pity. * Jeff Wilpon, whose family owns the Mets and lost hundreds of millions in Madoff’s scheme, remains friendly with Mark Madoff. But that is being strained by Mark’s "excessive self-pity. "
Strained relations. Hooper gave Andrew a birthday card in April that said, "Hope you have a fun day doing all the things people in prison wish they could do." When Andrew told her that his real wish was to have his parents back, she shot back, "Yeah, they were a really nice idea."
When Andrew complained to an African American friend that he is unemployed, broke, and "just trying to stay out of jail — my name is mud," his friend replied: "Well, now you’re just like every black man in America."
There’s more at Page Six, including the shunning of the Madoff grandchildren by classmates at the New York City private school, Dalton. If this sampling is any indication, we really can’t wait to read Margolick’s full piece in Vanity Fair.
Reuters reveals that the article says Mark Madoff scrutinizes every story and blog on the scandal. Andew, on the other hand, appears to have detached himself emotionally. He calls the situations "a father-son betrayal of biblical proportions." Cue the violins!
Improvement in first time unemployment claims is slowing. Actual, not seasonally manipulated data, including an adjustment for the usual weekly upward revision, shows that the year to year rate of change is on the cusp of a possible upside breakout, which would be good news for stock market bears if it happens.
Initial Unemployment Claims Chart- Click to enlarge
Here’s why it’s mind blowing. I’ve plotted it below on an inverse scale with the S&P 500 overlaid.
Unemployemt Claims and Stock Prices - Click to enlarge
Major US Markets including (NYSEARCA:DIA), (NYSEARCA:SPY), (NASDAQ:QQQ), and (NYSEARCA:IWM) dropped over 3% each on Italian bond fears and an increased worry that Europe will not be able to bail out its 4th largest economy. Furthermore, the iShares MCSI Italy Fund (NYSEARCA:EWI) wiped out over 9% today, further illustrating the dire situation in Italy and the European Union: ...
The second economic disappointment of the day comes from the Dallas Fed, which dropped from -2.0 to -11.4 on expectations of -9.0- this was the 4th consecutive negative print month. The report was, in a word, horrible, with just 2 of the 15 constituent indices posting an increase, and the bulk solidly in the red, led by Unfilled and New Orders which dropped 16.8 and 11.2, respectively: not good for economic growth. On the employment side there was nothing good either, with both employment and hours worked declining by -...
Bloomberg reports that Diana Containerships (NASDAQ: DCIX) files to offer stock up to $172.5M. Diana Containerships says that Diana shipping will also buy $20M of stock.
Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysisVLOSTRONGBUYAn increasingly positive growth rate of past earnings, along with improving expectations for long term growth, make Valero a good prospect for high returns.KROSTRONGBUYKronos Worldwide has been gaining recognition from analysts as a good canditate for achieving higher than expected earnings along with higher overall projected valuation.SFIBUYiStar is one of the top candidates projected to achieve both higher than previously projected earnings in the short run and a higher earnings growth rate in the long run.AMATSTRONGBUYApplied Materials has been...
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February is now past, and the Biotech Porfolio is loaded with winners and a miss (PLX). MRK is down a bit, but I expect that trade to recover, and one could be more agressive and double down on it, or play another round at the Jan13 $30 options for roughly the same price. Below is the summary, and note the grey boxes are ones that did not fill. I am still a fan of BMRN, and like DEPO as well. Now let's look at a few others.
Table 1. PSW Biotech Plays Since January 2011
 
Our newest play is Momenta Pharmaceuticals (MNTA), who is pursuing a three-part business model which includes complex generic equivalents in partnership with the Sandoz division of Novartis, proprietary compounds, and follow-on- biologics (FOB). It seems that this company is tied up in competition/litigation wit...
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A paper has been going around that describes a startling new world of high-velocity computerized trading that causes volume and volatility to soar and costs ordinary investors billions of dollars.
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(