I read
this piece by John Mauldin this week. Always have for his weekly write ups. Of particular interest is this portion where he tries to explain perhaps why we see such a huge run up this month:
- The banks “voluntarily” took a 50% haircut. Because the write off was voluntary, there would be no triggering of credit default swaps clauses.
- If you bought credit default swaps on a certain bank’s debt (lets say JP Morgan , but it could be any bank) because you think that Morgan is exposed to too much credit default swap risk.
- If Goldman sold you the CDS, they could and would in turn hedge their risk by shorting some quantity of Morgan stock, or perhaps if the risk was sizeable enough, the S&P as a whole.
- When they took that voluntarily haircut, the risk evaporated. There would be no CDS event. So why buy ...
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