Posts Tagged ‘investments’
Why credit risk is something to bear in mind
Saturday, January 2, 2010 18:38 Comments OffThe asymmetric distribution of corporate bond returns is easily explained by the Merton model introduced earlier. Numerous studies substantiate that even the return distributions of less risky and more liquid asset classes like government bonds are skewed and leptokurtic. Moreover, index returns exhibit significant autocorrelation that can be explained partially by a permanent component. Basically, [...]
The true volatility of payday loans
Saturday, December 19, 2009 19:01 Comments OffA special situation occurs in the high-yield sector. The illiquidity in large parts of the universe causes price lags meaning that the aforementioned small changes in credit quality are not immediately reflected in bond prices. In the economic literature, this effect is known as non-trading. With respect to high-yield indices non-trading and non-synchronous trading of [...]
Small changes in credit quality
Saturday, December 5, 2009 16:45 Comments OffMean–variance analysis, made popular by Markowitz and Sharpe, has been the basis for the process of portfolio optimization since the 1990s. Yet, the method itself suffers from various pitfalls. Among others it ignores deviations of the return distributions from normality. The asymmetric risk profile of corporate bonds and the illiquidity of certain segments of the [...]
How to prepare a credit portfolio
Sunday, November 22, 2009 13:21 Comments OffClearly investors willing to allocate a part of their budget to corporate bonds are facing two questions. First, they have to decide how much of their budget they want to invest in corporate bonds. In this context we will focus on a pure fixed income portfolio. Usually private as well as institutional investors define their [...]
Correlation between credit spreads and future economic activity
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 19:32 Comments OffSo far, we have identified a close correlation between credit spreads and future economic activity. When the economy is growing, usually each sector benefits from that growth. In the labor sector, economic growth typically leads to falling unemployment and rising wages. Historically, the corporate sector has benefited particularly during economic expansions. Not only did corporate [...]
Money Market Funds
Sunday, July 19, 2009 9:29 Comments OffMoney market funds are not government guaranteed. Betrayal is a slight risk with money market funds. In rare instances, the dollar value gets broken. Money market funds are a collection of the highest-rated, 90-day, commercial debt and government paper. By law, money market funds must have 95 percent of their assets in top-rated debt. Still, [...]
Short term Securities
Wednesday, July 15, 2009 19:13 Comments OffIdeally, during the time you own short-term securities you will have only a sense of confidence that your dollar is always worth a dollar and your interest, however small, is always accumulating. When this confidence is threatened, expect powerful emotions including a sense of betrayal and a loss of faith. When the dollar value of [...]
Savings accounts, CDs, and money market funds
Sunday, July 12, 2009 21:37 Comments OffThough savings trigger intense emotions, trigger events for the intense emotions are rare. In addition, the number of emotions triggered by savings accounts, CDs, and money market funds is small. Short-term savings investments are sold as security. If you need predictability, these are the investments for you. One dollar invested here should always be worth [...]