Archive - Apr 25, 2009

Among the more important facts skipped by the general public in its fascination with the equity bear market rally, is that the perspective for leveraged corporate issuers is getting worse and worse, never more so than just this March, when the monthly annualized default rate surged to a 20 year record high of 19.4%, on par with rating agency expectations for 2009 actual default rates. This has been coupled with unprecedented low unsecured recovery rates of 9%.

Among the more important facts skipped by the general public in its fascination with the equity bear market rally, is that the perspective for leveraged corporate issuers is getting worse and worse, never more so than just this March, when the monthly annualized default rate surged to a 20 year record high of 19.4%, on par with rating agency expectations for 2009 actual default rates. This has been coupled with unprecedented low unsecured recovery rates of 9%.

Compliments of reader Tim.

For those too lazy to click on the Federal Reserve link and read, below are some of the key points contained in the SCAP:

(1) “more than 150 senior supervisors, on-site examiners, analysts and economists” spent a month reviewing the 19 BHC’s that hold two thirds of the country’s bank assets and account for one half of the loans

Demonstrating just how massive the ongoing quant (and market) dislocation is, the most recent performance numbers for Jim Simons monster RIEF fund, which is arguably one of the largest quant funds in the world with $100 billion in total capacity (comps being BGI, Getco and Highbridge, the last of which incidentally was responsible for the massive market spike on Thursday afternoon as it force-deleveraged through its owner JP Morgan), indicate that it is underperfoming the S&P by almost 17% Month To Date.