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These subprime borrowers have now been in their homes 12 to 16 years and have built up equity instead of being upside down when the housing market cratered in 07/08. Dan Ivascyn mentioned in his recent interview how unlikely these borrowers would be to default now even if they their economic situation worsens. There may be another economic crisis but next time it may finally be the much ballyhooed corporate credit crisis. From my experience investors always want to relive the previous crisis not realizing they never immediately repeat. A classic example is the inflation crisis of the 70s. How many times have we heard since then another inflation crisis is just around the corner.@Junkster
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I'm not sure where they're still finding non-agency debt trading at 70 cents on the dollar of par value today. One of their major competitors, Angel Oak, at the end of 2018 said they were buying at 86 cents on the dollar: https://angeloakcapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/4Q/Seeking_to_Improve_Quality_While_Maintaining_Income_Whitepaper-web.pdf
Here's what Angel Oak says:So if it's 70 cents, I assume it is probably lower credit quality, which could be fine so long as one is willing to accept the additional default risk. I see the distinction in your post is sub-prime so that must be it.For example, the prime, Alt-A, and option ARM legacy NA RMBS we target at the top of the capital structure are still at deep discounts relative to par at approximately 86 cents on the dollar.
Update: OK, I see here for AlphaCentric's own data, the portfolio is at 75 cents on the dollar and the entire market they say is 81 cents on the dollar: alphacentricfunds.com/funds/IncomeOpp/presentation.pdf
Yet it is interesting--one word for it, scary is another--how far down the capital structure with regard to collateral and credit quality you have to go to get to such discounts now. See page 19 to look at their example of the debt tranches. I'm not saying this strategy won't work, but clearly there are risks here.
Yes, that was by far it’s worst one day performance. That was during the period when both stocks and bonds were being pummeled by rising rates. The current rise in the 10 year Treasury has me a bit spooked although it hasn’t impacted IOFIX much or its cousin DPFNX at all. The later holds less subprime. I may lighten up on IOFIX albeit not drastically. Me lightening to any degree works well as a contrarian indicator.You are correct, PV has 2 choices monthly or yearly performance. This means the -0.87 is per one whole month.
I looked carefully (I hope) and that day last Nov was the worse one day decline in 3 years, I found several more days with -0.6 to -0.8%
Don’t hold your breath waiting. Have seen no indication.Any chance that D&C will offer a money market fund?
No argument from me on that!I was thinking you were going to say T Rowe Price. They are great!
#1 pretty much sums it up and very close to what I wrote in my book. Half my profits in 98 and 99 came from the new fund effect in tech and small cap growth because of allotments to hot IPOs. I can think of a few new funds from Janus and INVESCO that were up 15% to 25% in a month. Even used Strong’s new high yield fund to my advantage in 96 where it beat not only all its peers but the S&P. I also exploited datelining - probably the closest thing to a free lunch you could ever find on Wall Street. I make no bones about luck being on my side in the 90s. Funny thing about luck as I have also been lucky since 2000 too, especially the luckiest trade of my lifetime - junk bonds on 12/16/2008 when the Fed rang the loudest bell I have ever heard on Wall Street. Probably explains why The Luck Factor by Max Gunther is one of top three favorite books.@junkster I was writing about funds back when those studies on new funds came out and a few things come to mind:
1. In the 1990s many new small cap and growth funds were launched that benefitted from extra IPO allocation to hot dot.com stocks like Pets.com and
Webvan. Van Wagoner , Turner Microcap Growth, Strong and Janus funds come to mind. Some of them ultimately got in trouble for juicing their new fund returns with more shares of these IPOs than other funds at the shop and not acknowledging that it was IPOs doing the heavy lifting and that once the funds grew in size the IPO effect wouldn’t last. In fact, many of those IPOs subsequently flamed out. In any case, times have changed and we no longer have a 1990s IPO market for new funds to benefit from.
2. I am fairly certain those Kobren and Charles Schwab studies did not adjust for survivorship bias. I would have to check but I did write about them back then—favorably too I believe—and I recall no mention of survivor bias. Please provide any evidence of the new fund effect that adjusts for survivor bias today if you have it. I doubt there is any evidence for it as I see bad new funds liquidated every day. In fact, their liquidations are tracked here. Nor is this to say I am against new funds. But I think newness must be accompanied with additional quantitative and qualitative research, the kind David does on this site. Fees should be part of that research in my view, and there is far more evidence of fees importance to performance than the new fund effect.
3. Think of the kind of fund this is and what it’s investing in—non-agency debt. That debt has in the past become extraordinarily illiquid during times of market stress. And funds that invested in it have been crushed due to illiquidity. I suggest MFOers look up the Regions Morgan Keegan funds if they doubt the risks of a liquidity crunch. Such a sector is not the best fit for a mutual fund that must provide daily liquidity in my view especially if the fund concentrates in that sector to a high degree over more liquid mortgage bonds. The sector meanwhile is shrinking each year.
4. At $2 billion in assets this fund collects $30 million in fees a year. At $3 billion it collects $45 million. The team required to investigate this one sector of the market must be highly compensated with that fee. Are they earning it with good Individual security selection or by concentrating in the riskiest sectors of the mortgage market more so than their lower cost peers. Regions Morgan Keegan once had a great record too before the housing bust by taking such risks.
5. In a highly illiquid sector money managers often use a pricing system called fair value for estimating securities value in the portfolio. That can make the fund seem a lot more stable than it actually is and hides risk. It also creates an incentive for fraud in how securities prices are marked.
Thanks @Old_Joe ...... :)Extensive research shows that 99.6% of the time this topic is discussed on MFO a major recession starts within 36 hours.
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