Tag Archives: markets

Investment Acumen

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Investment managers at Harvard and the State of Hawaii—and a potful of others—have made big bets [sic] on the low volatility of the stock and bond markets and on the apparent permanence of that low volatility.

After interest rates collapsed on the heels of the financial crisis, they [pension funds, endowments, and family offices] ran into challenges paying pensioners and filling university budgets, and added riskier bets on hedge funds and venture capital in the hopes of winning better returns.

More recently, some of these investors also made big, unpublicized wagers seeking to benefit from what had been an unusually long period of low volatility, according to pension-fund consultants and others who deal with these institutions. The strategies, often involving the writing of complicated options contracts….

These high-rolling gamblers include such luminaries as Harvard University’s endowment managers, Hawaii’s managers of the State’s Employees’ Retirement System, and the managers of the Illinois State Universities Retirement System.

Talk about betting the farm.  And then, as some of you may have noticed, volatility returned to the markets a couple weeks ago.  The markets returned to normal.

The rise of low-volatility bets is among the reasons this downturn is different, investors say, and difficult to predict.

Right.  This time it’s different is the most common claim of those who’ve bet the biggest and are losing big league.

At least these geniuses aren’t betting their endowments and pensions on bitcoin futures.  Yet.

Don’t Pay It

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The Federal National Mortgage Association, Fannie Mae, the government-run (never mind that it’s supposedly only government-sponsored, it began life as a government agency, it was set out on its own and failed, and now it’s under Federal Housing Finance Agency management regulation) mortgage securitizor, is failing again.  And now this agency wants a taxpayer bailout.

Fannie said Wednesday its regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, would seek a fresh taxpayer infusion of $3.7 billion from the Treasury Department as a result of the loss [of $6.5 billion in the last quarter alone]….

It also would be, if this taxpayer bailout goes through, the second one for this agency just since the Panic of 2008.

The thing has, in fact, been paying dividends to the Treasury, but it’s time to stop feeding it.  It isn’t necessary; if the free market wants securitized mortgages to facilitate mortgage lending, private enterprise securitizers will appear—just look at all the securitizers of other kinds of loans and other methods of securitization that have already appeared.  Treasury will more than make up for the lack of Fannie Mae dividends from the tax revenue accruing from a more dynamic free market.

Fannie Mae and its brother, Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), just distort the lending market.

The agency needs the infusion?  No, it doesn’t.  It needs to go away.  Along with Freddie Mac.

A New Insurance Plan

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Idaho has one.  Blue Cross of Idaho says it’s going to take advantage of newly issued State regulations to start marketing a plan that won’t meet Obamacare requirements, and they’re going to sell the plan alongside its existing Obamacare-compliant plans.

The Idaho Department of Insurance last month became the first state regulator to say it would let insurers begin offering “state-based plans” for consumers that involved practices generally banned for individual insurance under the ACA, including tying premium rates to enrollees’ pre-existing health conditions.

In particular,

The new Blue Cross state plans’ premiums would vary based on an enrollee’s health status—for instance, for one of its new plans, the insurer suggested that the best rate for a healthy 45-year-old could be around $194.67 a month, while a person of the same age with worse health could pay as much as $525.69. For one of its “bronze”-level ACA plans, the premium for a 45-year-old, regardless of health history, would typically be around $343.09, the insurer said.

Risk-based premiums.  What a concept.  And lower risk brings a premium roughly half the Obamacare risk-be-damned charge.

A New Welfare Trap

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This one is in the offing at the State level, and comes as a result of the punitive tax for not buying health coverage was repealed last December.

At least nine states are considering their own versions of a requirement that residents must have health insurance….

And

Maryland lawmakers are pursuing a plan to replace the ACA mandate, which requires most people to pay a penalty if they don’t have coverage. California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia, are publicly considering similar ideas.

Notice that.  These are Progressive-Democrat-run states.

The less well off who couldn’t afford either the penalty or the remaining costs—high deductibles, low per centage of plan provider payments even after “coverage” kicked in—under Obamacare still won’t be able to afford mandated coverage in these States.

Beyond that, they won’t be able to leave the State and relocate to one that doesn’t inflict these costs.  Their already limited economic resources are a barrier to such relocation.  Added to that, though, will be the lack of portability of the mandated coverage plans: having been dragooned into one by, say California or DC, they won’t be able to take it with them, even to Connecticut or Minnesota.  Or to a State that doesn’t require them to buy something they don’t want.

Progressive-Democrats really are that desperate to keep their welfare “recipients” trapped in welfare cages. Aside from that bit of self-serving…nonsense…the move also demonstrates the Progressive-Democrats’ utter contempt for us Americans.  We are, their behavior and policies say, just too mind-numbingly stupid to be entrusted with our own choices.  We have to be led by our Betters, forced for our own good, to do certain things.

Martin Feldstein Thinks the Markets are Headed for a Fall

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He’s right, to an extent.  The Price-Earnings ratio for aggregated publicly owned businesses is at historic highs.  His reasoning centers on four factors: the Fed’s raising of its benchmark interest rates, which will make money cost more for businesses; the Fed’s reducing its own government bond holdings, which will contribute to upward pressure on interest rates generally; the Federal government’s needing to borrow to cover its still enormous deficits; and heretofore easy money has made the labor market too tight.

However.

There are a couple things about Feldstein’s four reasons. One is that the improving economic activity will greatly mitigate (albeit not eliminate) stock price falls by raising business earnings to meet those falling stock prices—both the numerator and the denominator of the P/E ratio, after all, are dynamic, not only the numerator (albeit the one is capable of moving faster than the other).  Prices won’t fall as far as Feldstein seems to think.

Another thing is that Feldstein’s third reason is a prime argument for the Progressive-Democratic Party to get out of the way and allow Federal spending to be cut.

A third thing is that Feldstein is overstating the case in his fourth reason.  The labor market isn’t as tight as it might seem, given that the underemployed per centage remains at elevated levels, as does the number of workers who’ve left the labor market because they’ve given up; the latter is a population that can be persuaded to return to the labor force.