In this course, IBKR senior market analyst Steven Levine provides essential details about the U.S. municipal bond market, including the types of securities investors typically encounter such as general obligation bonds and revenue bonds. We’ll also offer you some tools to enable you to obtain a better understanding of the risks involved with municipal securities [...]
NYU Stern recently presented a series of White Papers titled “Restoring Financial Stability: How to Repair a Failed System”. And how exactly does NYU plan to repair the system? The answer is by getting into the ratings game. This wouldn’t just be the letter ratings but a quantitative approach to measuring how “systematically risky” a [...]
Ed Grebeck, CEO of Tempus Advisors had an interesting story to share that may be pertinent to the recent Sober Look post on the Goldman - Buffett transaction: 1999: gold price declining and volatile. GS approached me [Employers Re., a subsidiary of GE capital] with a transaction to hedge their exposure to 3 gold mines [...]
Here is a great BNN interview with Ed Grebeck discussing bank capitalization and the rating agencies. Of particular interest is the discussion on rating agencies' methodologies and the resulting ratings that vary across the various departments within a single agency. Here are some highlights: 1. Basle-II convention treats a company (such as GE) debt "AAA" [...]
After a conversation with Ed Grebeck (Tempus Advisors), I thought it may be helpful to do a quick overview of the evolution of Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs) from the "bubble" years to the current environment. The CLO market is the only securitization survivor of the financial crisis that has retained the full capital structure [...]