In the residential mortgagebacked securities (RMBS) sector. In a second stage, we focus on the more advanced modeling techniques that have emerged among the most active market participants.
From an historical perspective, the structured finance market began with the issuance of the first mortgage-backed security in the U.S. by the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) in 1968. Soon after, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) introduced its mortgage participation certificates in 1970, and, by 1977, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) was in the game.
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Posted in Finance, Loan
Optimizing return on regulatory and economic capital is a key concern for bank portfolio managers. Reducing the capital backing existing holdings can help redeploy the capital to more profitable businesses, shrink the balance sheet, or boost returns.
One obvious way of reducing the capital held is to sell a particular set of assets that are capital-intensive. But these assets tend also to be the ones that yield more and selling them could harm the return on the banks portfolios. CDO technology enables banks to keep most of the returns while significantly reducing regulatory capital.
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Posted in Finance, Strategy
There are several common trading strategies that being used by businessman, those are:
Elementary Portfolio
Selling protection on an index of credit default swap (CDS) is an example of an elementary credit portfolio. For example, the credit index, CDX.NA.IG, consisting of 125 North American credits, will be used to provide sample calculations. The risk-profile for the CDO trades will be compared with risks incurred in simply selling protection on the index.
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Posted in Finance, Strategy
The collateral debt obligations (CDO) modeling framework with static spread term structures and employing copula functions is taking hold in the accounting of synthetic CDO trading profit and loss (P&L). This has been spurred by tranches on standardized credit indexes (e.g., CDX.NA.IG, CDX.NA.HY, ITRAXX Eur, etc.) that have provided a calibration target for pricing models. There are ongoing discussions on different ways of fitting prices across the capital structure (e.g., “compound correlation,” versus “base correlation”).
Less understood are hedging strategies and their cost and effectiveness, and the basic risk-reward profiles of popular CDO trading strategies and the associated capitalization needs for banks. The two main reasons for this state of affairs are:
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Posted in Finance, Investment
In recent years, the market for collateral debt obligations (CDOs) and, in particular, the development of the synthetic CDO market and correlation trading has resulted in significant developments in valuation and risk management for such products. The market has been dominated by developments around the static Gaussian copula model, the introduction of base correlation as an alternative to the compound correlation, and extensions to better capture the observed correlation smile/skew, only recently more dynamic models that incorporate credit spreads or other major modeling parameters have been introduced by practitioners and academics.
All valuation approaches are based on risk-neutral pricing principles and little focus has been given to replication-based arguments that would also lead to developments for practical hedging and risk management. Currently, risk management often focuses on static risk measures that address the likelihood of a CDO investor receiving full notional and actual interest in a timely manner (ratings perspective), or on mark-to-market (MtM) sensitivities and “the greeks” frequently employed by correlation investors and traders.
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Posted in Finance, Investment, Loan