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The Fed’s Basel Endgame and the lazy supervisor problem

12 September 2023BanksBasel III, Federal Reserve, internal models, regulation, Silicon Valley BankNick Dunbar

The Federal Reserve is proposing to end its long flirtation with Basel internal models, and now is ousting the lead supervisor of Silicon Valley Bank. The actions are two sides of the same coin.

Equity financing risks glossed over by Credit Suisse fines

29 August 2023Banksequity derivatives, equity financing, hedge fundsNick Dunbar

At first glance, the $388m of fines imposed last month on Credit Suisse (via its new owner UBS) ought to draw a line under the Archegos scandal. But providing equity financing to hedge fund and family office clients is a lucrative business for large banks which involves systemic risk.

Charting China’s real estate bond meltdown

29 August 2023CreditChina, corporate bonds, distressed debt, real estateNick Dunbar

Our corporate bond tool shows that dollar-denominated Chinese real estate bonds are collectively worth just 12% of their total value two years ago. By analysing iBoxx departures and distressed prices, we firm up this analysis and look at the wider implications for China’s troubled economy.

The mountain range and the heat bath

14 July 2023Book ReviewsAI, artificial intelligenceNick Dunbar

Is there another book left to be written about AI? The second of a two-part series.

The last rites of BP’s pension fund

14 July 2023Articles, Pensionsinterest rates, pensions, taxationNick Dunbar

BP’s pension scheme was once a leading stakeholder in UK companies, but now it’s been ‘de-risked’ and may soon be hived off to an insurer. The story encapsulates the slow decline of Britain’s private sector defined benefit pension system.

Mechanical desires – some published and unpublished books on AI

30 June 2023Book ReviewsNick Dunbar

How do recent books help us understand the boom in artificial intelligence, and what is left to be written?

Conditioning and the Bank of England’s credibility problem

30 June 2023EconomicsBank of England, central banking, Federal Reserve, inflation, interest rate swapsNick Dunbar

The Bank of England uses forward rates derived from the swap market to forecast future base rates. This approach is flawed, and has contributed to the Bank’s loss of credibility in the fight against inflation.

Inflation and the return of corporate borrowing

8 June 2023Credithealthcare, inflation, utilitiesNick Dunbar

High interest rates were a dampener on corporate borrowing but now the trend has reversed, led by two sectors with their own inflationary characteristics

Rigged: The Incredible True Story of the Whistleblowers Jailed after Exposing the Rotten Heart of the Financial System

8 June 2023Book Reviewsinterest rate benchmarks, LIBORRobert Carver

Were prosecutions of bankers for LIBOR rigging an injustice? This is the argument of a new book, reviewed by Rob Carver

JP Morgan swallows First Republic Bank

5 May 2023Banks, Risk CommentaryAccounting, bank resolution, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Reserve, interest rates, JP MorganNick Dunbar

Six months ago we warned about held-to-maturity bond losses at US banks, but now the giants that hedged the risk are hoovering up depositors while unhedged regional banks are in crisis

How generative AI made Nvidia a giant of the S&P 500

5 May 2023Risk Commentary, TechnologyAI, artificial intelligence, equities, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, semiconductorsNick Dunbar

11 years ago, Geoff Hinton and two grad students used a pair of GPU chips to win an image classification contest. Now these chips are powering the generative AI boom and have doubled Nvidia’s market cap.

ARM and the UK stock market’s addiction to foreign capital

6 February 2023Risk Commentary, TechnologyARM Holdings, equities, regulation, semiconductorsNick Dunbar

The UK government is desperate for Softbank-owned ARM Holdings to have a UK listing. But reversing the long-term trend toward foreign ownership of UK assets requires a rethink of the regulatory and tax obstacles to UK share ownership

Spares and heirs in the capital markets

18 January 2023Credit, Risk Commentarycorporate bondsNick Dunbar

At first sight, corporate bonds did badly in 2022, but aside from a handful of exceptions, this was the result of the sell-off in government debt, our analysis shows. With yields of 4-5%, investment grade bonds are now an attractive asset class.

Banks can’t hide from the pain of underwater bond investments

29 November 2022Banks, Risk CommentaryAccounting, government bonds, interest rate risk, investments, mortgage-backed securitiesNick Dunbar

The biggest US banks amassed $2.2 trillion of government and mortgage bond investments, but now the portfolios are underwater and banks must hold them to avoid recording losses. This will have a lasting effect on deposits and the impact of Fed policy.

The endgame of Chinese real estate bonds

15 November 2022EconomicsNick Dunbar

China’s real estate developers are frozen out of the bond markets, with steep losses priced in for bonds that haven’t yet defaulted. A sketchy regulatory rescue plan is likely to be too little, too late to make a difference.

When linkers bite back

21 October 2022Economics, Risk Commentaryforecasting, inflation, inflation-linked bonds, national accountsNick Dunbar

Inflation-linked bonds are proving costly to governments that issued them, and in the case of the UK, markets imply the pain will last for years to come.

Gilt trip

29 September 2022Economics, Risk Commentarygilts, pension funds, sovereign debt, United KingdomNick Dunbar

How a populist fiscal experiment brought market mayhem and ended bond investors’ patience – at the worst possible time

Microprediction: Building an Open AI Network

22 September 2022Book ReviewsAI, predictionRobert Carver

Open source prediction networks offer cheap AI forecasting outside the control of tech giants. But lack of infrastructure means the vision has yet to be realised, writes Rob Carver.

An introduction to the Risky Finance currency tool

7 September 2022EconomicsNick Dunbar

We use statistical tools to analyse how 38 currencies performed against the US dollar

The strong dollar investment puzzle

7 September 2022Economicscurrencies, FXNick Dunbar

Now that the dollar has reached 30-40 year highs against major currencies, how should non-US investors think about US stocks? We’ve built some new visualisation tools to help analyse the problem.

Descending the debt mountain

17 June 2022Creditcorporate bonds, inflationNick Dunbar

Inflation-busting is likely to involve a recession, and companies are starting to reduce debt built up during the pandemic. What’s the best way to do it?

Regulators zero in on commodities

30 May 2022Bankscommodity risk, Federal Reserve, JP Morgan, nickelNick Dunbar

Bank exposures to commodities have reached record highs and in the wake of the nickel market turmoil in March, the Fed is warning about financial stability implications

Cash positioning for an upwards rate shock

3 May 2022Funds, Risk Commentarycash, Federal Reserve, inflation, money market funds, repo lendingNick Dunbar

While the Federal Reserve anticipates 2-3% interest rates will be enough to combat inflation, the choice of cash holdings for financial institutions provides a clue to their confidence in the Fed’s strategy. The evidence shows that they expect a bumpy ride.

Inflation and the corporate debt hangover

25 March 2022Creditcorporate bonds, inflationNick Dunbar

Inflation is supposed to be good for corporate bond issuers, because the real value of repayments is eroded. But what if a company’s ability to repay debt from earnings is eroded even faster?

The war and the pandemic

7 March 2022EconomicsCovid-19, equities, UkraineNick Dunbar

As war unfolds in Ukraine, equity markets are reflecting the abrupt change from pandemic to war.

Barclays and the question of reliance

25 February 2022Municipal FinanceBarclays, litigation, LOBOs, Newham councilNick Dunbar

An eve-of-trial settlement between Newham Council and Barclays brings a decade-long saga to an end but leaves open a key question in UK law.

Taperchase

9 December 2021Articles, Economicsinflation, quantitative easingNick Dunbar

What happens when inflation and quantitative easing collide? Despite the taper talk, QE isn’t going away soon.

Viruses: Agents of Evolutionary Invention

2 November 2021Book Reviewsbiology, Covid-19, evolution, medicineNick Dunbar

Dozens of books have already been published on the pandemic, and many are already out of date. To appreciate Covid, it’s best to step back and read this account of viruses published four years ago.

Tales from the junk bond boom

12 October 2021Credithigh yield bondsNick Dunbar

One in two corporate bonds issued this year have been high yield, after redemptions are taken into account. Who are the winners and losers so far?

Building on sand

15 September 2021EconomicsChina, corporate bonds, regulationNick Dunbar

Distress is building in corners of the Chinese offshore corporate bond market. What does this tell us about the nation’s relationship with foreign capital and investment?

Archegos, deleveraging and the instant bear market

12 August 2021Fundscounterparty credit risk, equities, hedge fundsNick Dunbar

Using Credit Suisse’s Archegos report, we explore how without any fundamental change in corporate earnings or economic sentiment, deleveraging mechanisms can produce an ‘instant bear market’

Commodity bets return at large banks

1 July 2021Bankscommodity risk, ESG, green finance, regulationNick Dunbar

Carmakers and other industries need good risk management as they pivot toward climate-friendly products. This has prompted banks to return to taking outsized commodity bets, which in the past have caused trading losses and compliance disasters for many institutions.

A servant of two masters

17 June 2021Bankscentral banks, corporate bonds, leverage ratios, SLR, TLACNick Dunbar

Caught between a wall of QE cash and a web of capital rules, what is left for bank CEOs to do? The evidence from securities holdings, bond issuance and TLAC.

The $3 trillion hidden exposure behind the Archegos blowup

30 April 2021Banksequity financing, hedge funds, prime brokerage, repo lendingNick Dunbar

How the push for growth turned equity financing into a hotbed of regulatory arbitrage

Facing up to JP Morgan’s leverage relief threats

18 March 2021BanksBank of America, Covid-19, Federal Reserve, JP Morgan, leverage ratios, regulationNick Dunbar

The banking giant warned that it might slash its vast balance sheet if the Fed doesn’t roll over temporary leverage ratio relief. Could it unleash a wave of turmoil in wholesale markets if it doesn’t get what it wants?

Which councils will go bust next?

25 February 2021Municipal Financeliquidity, LOBOs, local governmentNick Dunbar

UK councils are at the front line of the pandemic, but financial mismanagement is adding to their woes. Risky Finance has compiled a list of English authorities mostly likely to be on the receiving end of a government bailout.

Italian derivatives opera

10 February 2021Articlesinterest rate swaps, litigation, sovereign debt, swaptionsNick Dunbar

Italian courts are prosecuting former officials involved in derivatives terminated by Morgan Stanley nine years ago. But the US bank actually did Italy a favour, unlike the country’s other sovereign counterparties.

Making debt disappear

20 January 2021EconomicsCovid-19, modern monetary theory, quantitative easingNick Dunbar

Developed nations face ballooning post-pandemic debt burdens. In a QE world, does that actually matter?

How my ancestors helped me through the pandemic

5 January 2021Book ReviewsCovid-19, medicine, pandemicsNick Dunbar

The experience of a doctor who fought pandemics a century and a half ago provides some hope for today

Revenge of the minnows

24 November 2020FundsNick Dunbar

Rampant gigantism in the stock market took a blow recently as small-cap stocks enjoyed a run of outperformance. Is this the return of value?

How Covid forbearance gave banks a three trillion dollar boost

3 November 2020BanksBasel rules, CECL, Covid-19, Dodd-Frank Act, investment banking, tradingNick Dunbar

To keep banks operating smoothly during the pandemic, regulators eased capital requirements and boosted trading profits by underpinning financial markets. Did they go too far?

Playing chicken in the high yield market

19 October 2020Creditbankruptcy, corporate bonds, high yield bonds, restructuringNick Dunbar

In 2020, junk bondholders have to choose between painful restructuring and pushing for a repayment that might kill a company

How Covid-19 sent a shiver through bank balance sheets

28 May 2020Bankscounterparty credit risk, credit valuation adjustment, Federal Reserve, mortgage-backed securities, quantitative easing, stress VaR, Value-at-riskNick Dunbar

In value-at-risk models, counterparty exposure and securities holdings, the impact of the pandemic appears across bank balance sheets

The adventures of CECL in banking land

27 May 2020BanksAccounting, CECL, corporate loans, IFRS 9, loan loss provisions, retail loansNick Dunbar

Should accounting be independent of bank supervision? The arrival of IFRS 9 provisioning at the height of the Covid-19 crisis has exposed a three way tussle between auditors, regulators and bank management.

Visualising China’s emerging market lending splurge

16 April 2020EconomicsChina, Covid-19, government bondsNick Dunbar

Emerging market nations may struggle to repay debt in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. And for many the biggest lender is China, as a new visualisation shows.

The corporate bond market on 18 March 2020

20 March 2020CreditCovid-19Nick Dunbar

An interactive visualisation of $12 trillion of corporate bonds showing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Free to registered users.

How Covid-19 infected the corporate bond market

20 March 2020Creditairlines, central banks, coronavirus, Covid-19, high yield bondsNick Dunbar

The coronavirus outbreak has infected the corporate bond market as economies grind to a halt. Can trillions of emergency central bank measures keep borrowers alive?

US banks face yield curve stress test

9 March 2020BanksBank of America, Goldman Sachs, interest rates, JP Morgan, mortgage-backed securitiesNick Dunbar

The Covid-19 pandemic is driving bond yields to record lows. Meanwhile, the exposure of large US banks to falling rates has been amplified by regulatory changes and ballooning securities portfolios.

The Rise of Carry

9 February 2020Book ReviewstradingRobert Carver

Rob Carver reviews ‘The Rise of Carry’ by Coldiron, Lee and Lee

Argentina’s local debt puzzle

28 January 2020Economics, Municipal FinanceArgentina, Emerging markets, sub-sovereignsNick Dunbar

Sub-sovereign or regional debt is normally viewed as riskier than the sovereign. But default-prone Argentina has pushed this thesis to breaking point.

Risky Finance – review of the decade

31 December 2019ArticlesDevil's DerivativesNick Dunbar

A review of the top ten articles published in the last ten years

Goldman deploys slimmed-down model in retail push

17 December 2019BanksApple Inc, Basel rules, Goldman Sachs, qualifying revolving exposures, retail loansNick Dunbar

Goldman Sachs is venturing into consumer lending, with the help of Apple Card. Part of the strategy involves dramatic changes to the bank’s risk models

How JP Morgan broke the repo market

17 December 2019BanksFederal Reserve, JP Morgan, money market funds, repo lendingNick Dunbar

The Fed relied on JP Morgan to lend out cash into the repo market. But that was before the too-big-to-fail giant made a pivot out of cash into securities.

Giants of the S&P500 and the inequality backlash

20 November 2019Economicsinequality, wealthNick Dunbar

The S&P 500 index added $5 trillion of market cap this year, led by its biggest members. The trend is accelerating wealth inequality.

Corporate bonds dance to the central banks’ tune

9 October 2019Economicscorporate bonds, quantitative easingNick Dunbar

This year’s reversal in central bank sentiment has swept through the corporate bond market

BNP Paribas piles on the senior tranches

8 October 2019BanksCLOs, credit ratings, securitisationNick Dunbar

The French banking giant more than doubled its securitisation exposure in the past 12 months, filings show. Does the ballooning CLO portfolio pose a risk?

Europe’s negative yield explosion

18 July 2019EconomicsECB, quantitative easingNick Dunbar

Amounts of negative-yielding euro debt have surged to record levels in anticipation of further easing. But how effective is the ECB’s strategy?

The year that transformed Britain’s LOBO landscape

12 July 2019Municipal FinanceLOBOs, Newham council, RBSNick Dunbar

Gauging the significance of the LOBO redemption wave

The Sharpe Ratio Ratio

1 July 2019Research & presentationsinvesting, quantitative analysisNick Dunbar

Portfolio optimisers often give results that are extreme and unstable. With so many variables involved, it can be hard to decipher why. This article presents a simplified formula for a two-asset optimisation which will bolster your intuitive understanding of how a portfolio optimiser behaves and why it may behave badly. Download the paper here About…

Smart Beta and Dumb Optimisation

28 June 2019FundsNick Dunbar

Portfolio optimisation has transformed investing in recent decades. But according to a new paper, naive application of such modelling can lead to extreme or unstable trading strategies.

Inside China’s real estate bond boom

21 June 2019ArticlesNick Dunbar

As trade tensions worsen, dollar-denominated bond issuance by Chinese real estate companies is at a record high, while credit spreads have tightened.

Leveraging the Powell put in US M&A markets

21 June 2019ArticlesNick Dunbar

With a softening approach from central banks, borrowing-driven M&A is being rewarded

What happened in bank risk last year?

29 March 2019BanksNick Dunbar

Dismantling Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan’s Steinhoff fallout and the return of securitisation

Handicapping Goldman’s 1MDB liabilities

30 January 2019BanksGoldman Sachs, operational riskNick Dunbar

The 1MDB scandal may result in a record legal settlement for Goldman Sachs. Risky Finance visualises the expected loss and explores how life-changing it might be for Goldman.

Where would the market be without share buybacks?

4 January 2019Articlesequities, S&P 500Nick Dunbar

The decline in equity markets seen in the last few months would have been worse without the countervailing effect of buybacks. But by how much?

Collins wedge pushes internal credit models towards irrelevance

2 November 2018BanksBasel rules, Dodd-Frank Act, Federal Reserve, JP Morgan, PNC Financial, Wells FargoNick Dunbar

The Collins amendment has become a binding capital constraint for the biggest US banks. Does this support the Fed’s argument for rolling back the advanced approaches provisions of Dodd-Frank?

The Book of Why

14 October 2018Book Reviewsartificial intelligence, Bayesian probability, scienceNick Dunbar

Judea Pearl’s causal modelling and a critique of AI

Turkey’s crisis in six charts

15 August 2018Articles, EconomicsEmerging markets, TurkeyNick Dunbar

Turkey faces an economic crisis as its dispute with the US escalates. We highlight Turkey’s financial vulnerabilities with six charts.

Advances in Financial Machine Learning

1 August 2018Book ReviewsRobert Carver

Robert Carver reviews ‘Advances in Financial Machine Learning’ by Marcos Lopez de Prado

Tracking the frontier markets debt bubble

23 July 2018EconomicsAfrica, Emerging markets, frontier markets, government bondsNick Dunbar

Frontier market sovereigns are splurging on new borrowing just as investors are cooling on the asset class. A Risky Finance visualisation tool identifies the countries you need to watch.

The Fed’s troubling stress test calculations

12 July 2018BanksCCAR, Stress testsNick Dunbar

The Fed’s annual stress tests and capital analysis amount to a contest between the regulator’s models of large banks in a crisis and those of the banks themselves. The latest disclosures suggest troubling flaws in the Fed’s calculations.

The music won’t stop soon in media-telecom merger frenzy

22 June 2018Mergers & acquisitionsmergers & acquisitionsNick Dunbar

The AT&T Time Warner merger, and the battle between Comcast and Disney for Fox will prompt a vast amount of new borrowing. The spillover effects on other borrowers in the media and telecom sectors could be challenging.

Italy’s populists throw down gauntlet to Draghi

25 May 2018Articles, EconomicsECB, European Central Bank, Italy, quantitative easingNick Dunbar

Italy’s new populist government is on a collision course with the ECB, which is mulling the tapering of QE purchases. But inflation divergence suggests a way out for the central bank.

Hefty swap bets fail to lift Total Return Fund

24 May 2018Fundsexchange-traded funds, PimcoNick Dunbar

In a time of rising bond yields, active bond funds can use derivatives to manage duration risk. But as the experience of Pimco shows, attempts to generate alpha this way do not justify the risks or management costs.

Is Pimco’s Ivascyn hooked on credit default swaps?

3 May 2018Fundscredit default swaps, PimcoNick Dunbar

Pimco’s star manager uses credit default swaps to boost returns and increase inflows to his fund. How transparent are the risks?

Should councils pay interest penalties on government loans?

26 April 2018Municipal FinanceNick Dunbar

Market-based loan repayment penalties imposed by the UK government are being blamed for worsening pressures faced by local councils, and incentivising property speculation. Now calls are being made to reform the system.

US banks grow assets beneath regulatory radar

17 April 2018BanksBank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Wells FargoNick Dunbar

Since adopting Basel III reporting standards three years ago, the biggest US banks have started reducing risk weights while increasing lending. Is this a reflection of a healthy US economy or European-style gaming of internal models?

What causes trading volume?

12 April 2018Research & presentationseconomics, tradingNick Dunbar

Trading volume is much higher than economists predict. Quant Tom Hyer addresses the paradox from the perspective of relative value.

Putting employees over shareholders doomed Deutsche’s Cryan

6 April 2018BanksNick Dunbar

Deutsche Bank’s inability to control its investment bank compensation bill may have doomed John Cryan, analysis of pay disclosures suggests.

Did Bayes’ theorem kill a woman in Arizona?

23 March 2018Technologyartificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, Google, UberNick Dunbar

The death of a pedestrian hit by an Uber self-driving car highlights the need to understand the decision-making of autonomous vehicles. The story goes back 17 years to when the technology was first refined.

Steinhoff, the banks and the bezzle

2 March 2018Articles, BanksNick Dunbar

A scandal at South African group Steinhoff has hit the large banks that lent $1.6bn to the company’s largest shareholder. Differences in the way banks treated the exposure highlight hidden risks in the financial system.

Did EU banks really ‘slash’ exposure to the UK?

13 December 2017Articles, BanksBrexitNick Dunbar

A €350bn decline in the exposure of EU banks to UK counterparties was widely interpreted as an exodus sparked by Brexit, but closer analysis of the data refutes this interpretation.

What risk disclosures tell us about Goldman’s problems and Morgan Stanley’s success

8 September 2017BanksNick Dunbar

Morgan Stanley has vaulted over Goldman this year in fixed income trading. Analysis of risk disclosures helps explain the divergence between the two firms.

Council borrowing event presentation

19 July 2017Research & presentationsNick Dunbar

Presentation to council borrowing event, London 18th July 2017

Are the Dodd-Frank stress tests running out of steam?

11 July 2017BanksNick Dunbar

Is the Fed’s DFAST stress test telling us that banks are getting safer, or are the banks just getting better at doing the internal modelling?

A History of British Actuarial Thought

30 June 2017Book Reviewsbook reviews, derivatives, economics, life insurance, pensionsNick Dunbar

by Craig Turnbull Palgrave Macmillan 2016 The reputation of actuaries in the UK has declined precipitously in the last three decades. Once they were among the most powerful decision makers in Britain’s financial sector, albeit semi-invisible. Today their role has been sharply curtailed by regulation and market trends, while their profession struggles to articulate its…

The justice of Libor prosecutions

11 April 2017Banksinterest rate benchmarks, LIBORNick Dunbar

Recent disclosures of calls between senior officials at the Bank of England and Barclays shed doubt on the fairness of prosecuting junior staff for Libor rigging.

The injustice of LIBOR prosecutions

11 April 2017Banksinterest rate benchmarks, LIBORNick Dunbar

Recent disclosures of calls between senior officials at the Bank of England and Barclays shed doubt on the fairness of prosecuting junior staff for Libor rigging.

UK local authority debt in six charts

20 March 2017Municipal Financeinterest rates, LOBOs, local governmentNick Dunbar

Dozens of UK councils are paying a significant proportion of tax revenues in debt interest payments, and the burden is worsened by record low interest rates

Brexit and HSBC’s risk reduction bonuses

15 March 2017Articles, BanksNick Dunbar

HSBC paid senior executives millions in bonuses for achieving RWA reduction targets. But how much was the result of their efforts?

The mystery of Barclays’ LOBO waiver

2 February 2017ArticlesNick Dunbar

Why did the bank unilaterally waive LOBO provisions in loans last year, losing as much as £1 billion in the process?

S&P 500 cash holdings and corporate tax reform

1 February 2017ArticlesNick Dunbar

S&P 500 companies have $2.4 trillion of cash and investments which may soon be repatriated back to the US as a result of tax reforms. We visualise the size of this cash pile relative to market cap.

ETFs, capital arbitrage and Morgan Stanley

22 January 2017Banksderivative assets, exchange-traded funds, high yield bonds, incremental risk charge, Market RWAs, Morgan Stanley, securities financingNick Dunbar

After making dramatic cuts to its balance sheet and capital requirements, Morgan Stanley is boosting returns in fixed income. Is the bank using bond ETFs for regulatory capital arbitrage?

Toblerones, Pampers and the retreat from currency hedging

3 January 2017Articles, Consumer Goods, News topicsNick Dunbar

In the wake of unprecedented currency shifts, consumer goods companies are reducing hedging in favour of product sizing techniques to retain customers

Morgan Stanley’s capital secret

3 January 2017Articles, BanksNick Dunbar

After making dramatic cuts to its balance sheet and capital requirements, Morgan Stanley is boosting returns in fixed income. Is the bank using bond ETFs for regulatory capital arbitrage?

Season of goodwill

22 December 2016Articles, BanksNick Dunbar

Christmas is when European banks typically book restructuring costs and goodwill writedowns. A study of quarterly profits shows the divergence versus US banks.

Who benefits the most from ECB bond buying?

14 December 2016ArticlesNick Dunbar

ECB president Mario Draghi says that corporate bond purchases are a success. Using securities lending disclosures allows the hypothesis to be tested with the help of an animated bubble chart.

How Pimco and Blackrock bond funds use derivatives

19 November 2016ArticlesNick Dunbar

In December 2015, the Securities & Exchange Commission proposed new regulations on the use of derivatives by US registered investment companies. This article looks at the derivatives exposures of two large mutual funds.

The year of frontier debt

27 October 2016ArticlesEmerging marketsNick Dunbar

Emerging market bonds have outperformed most asset classes this year, prompting talk of a QE-induced bubble. But research into global inequality suggests a secular shift into emerging market debt makes sense.

Close-out netting and safe harbours increase systemic risk

28 September 2016Research & presentationsNick Dunbar

The banking industry has long argued that close-out netting provisions in derivative contracts reduce systemic risk, and successfully lobbied to have 'safe harbour' provisions to protect counterparties from bankruptcy claims. This is embedded in US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, resulting in trillions of derivatives exposures not being counted on bank balance sheets. However the Lehman…

How the Fed’s physical commodity rule hits Goldman

22 September 2016Articles, Bankscommodity risk, Goldman SachsNick Dunbar

The Federal Reserve’s proposal to sharply raise capital requirements for bank physical commodity holdings puts Goldman Sachs on the spot and highlights the regulatory drive to rebuild barriers between banking and commerce.

The Taser and the choke lead: How the Fed restrains big banks

9 August 2016FinancialsCCAR, Dodd-Frank Act, Federal Reserve, JP Morgan, operational risk, operational RWAs, regulation, Stress testsNick Dunbar

Operational risk capital for US banks is the highest in the world but the Fed resists formally testing op risk in its stress tests. One reason might be that the Fed would have to explain why the charges need to be so high.

Seven things you didn’t know about the Goldman-Greece swap

29 July 2016Articlesderivatives, Goldman Sachs, GreeceNick Dunbar

15 years after it was signed, the Goldman-Greece swap continues to be a reputational problem for the bank. A longer feature that reviews a decade’s worth of unreported material on the story.

Visualising the high yield swoon

9 June 2016Credit, MarketsHigh yield - US, high yield bonds, oil & gas, regulationNick Dunbar

Were regulatory warnings about bond market herding borne out in the high yield sell off and rebound?

Steel and the pusillanimous pension rule

4 May 2016Industrials, News topicspensions, regulation, steelNick Dunbar

How pension policy cowardice helped doom Britain’s steel industry. Tata’s decision to write off the value of its UK steelmaking business and seek a quick sale, while keeping its Dutch business, is really a story about pension regulation.

Artificial intelligence: boom or bubble?

1 April 2016Articles, Technologyartificial intelligenceNick Dunbar

Artificial intelligence is booming and technology companies are pouring billions into AI research. But has AI really got to a take off point, and what does the history of the field have to tell us about the prospects for success?

Lost Lobos Part 2

19 January 2016Municipal FinanceKent council, LOBOs, municipal finance, Newham council, Redcar & Cleveland councilNick Dunbar

When I was in my twenties, I worked on a film being shot on location in the London borough of Newham. The film itself, which starred Jude Law and Sadie Frost, was forgettable, but one memory that stayed with me was the all-pervading smell of refined sugar from the nearby Tate & Lyle factory by the river Thames.

Autogeddon

18 January 2016News topicsNick Dunbar

Just over two years ago, I took a train from Berlin to Wolfsburg, to visit a senior executive at Volkswagen. From the station platform the famous chimneys of VW’s vast car plant loomed up. Inside the gate, the company’s vehicles were everywhere, catching

Giants of the S&P500

4 January 2016Articlesequities, equity indices, fund management, inequality, Russell 3000, S&P 500Nick Dunbar

In 2015, size equalled success in the stock market. But did benchmarking make this a self-fulfilling prophecy? Let’s start by looking at the market capitalisation of S&P 500 companies at the end of the year, with colours according to price change.

High yield’s retrenchment

21 December 2015Credit, MarketsCitigroup, commodity risk, credit, credit derivatives, ETFs, High yield - US, lending, Markit iBoxx $ Liquid High Yield indexNick Dunbar

There have been plenty of words written about the high-yield corporate bond market in the last week, but sometimes a chart expresses things better than words.

Newham’s cracked crystal ball

10 November 2015Municipal FinanceBarclays, interest rate risk, LOBOs, local government, municipal finance, Newham councilNick Dunbar

Between July 2007 and November 2008, Newham council entered into 10 range LOBO loans with Barclays worth a total of £238.5 million. New information on the council’s controversial loan portfolio shows the impact of its relationship with Barclays, raising questions about risk management decisions.

Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World

13 October 2015Articles, Book Reviewsclimate change, historyNick Dunbar

by Gillen D'Arcy Wood (Princeton University Press 2014) In my last year at Harvard, before I decided to drop out of the PhD program and pursue other things, I took a graduate meteorology class. The class teacher, Brian Farrell, was doing what other professors did and quietly sounded students out about taking him on as…

Autogeddon

1 October 2015Industrials, News topicsBasel rules, carmakers, emissions, regulation, VolkswagenNick Dunbar

Just over two years ago, I took a train from Berlin to Wolfsburg, to visit a senior executive at Volkswagen. From the station platform the famous chimneys of VW's vast car plant loomed up. Inside the gate, the company's vehicles were everywhere, catching the sun like a metallic sea. It crossed my mind that it…

Borges, Babel and the race against the machine

8 April 2015Comment, Technologyeconomics, fiction, innovation, MathematicsNick Dunbar

In a world of information, the way we measure combinations of words or ideas is important. Some people say it might even save humanity. Last year, economists Eric Brynolfsson and Andrew McAfee suggested that increasing combinations of business ideas could save us from being supplanted by intelligent machines. Like any powerful algorithm, combinatorics is both…

Burning down the house

7 February 2015Structured productsCDOs, credit ratings, litigationNick Dunbar

Ten years after Lehman, nothing evokes the crisis better than the plunge in collateralised debt obligations that was a key indicator of systemic risk at the time. This article includes a visualisation of a unique ratings agency database that will be kept on this site as a matter of public record. They rated every deal,…

Most-read articles of 2014

31 December 2014UncategorizedNick Dunbar

Is the sharing economy a new form of regulatory arbitrage? That was the question posed by my most popular article this year. Published in January, my take on Uber turned out to be prescient, as the ride sharing company attracted increasing regulatory headwinds around the world. The second most-read new article is actually a pair…

House of Debt

18 December 2014Book Reviewsbanking, economics, lending, public policyNick Dunbar

The authors are experts at crunching microeconomic data on American borrowing patterns and uncovering explanations for what they see. Their starting point is the remarkable statistic for US household debt, which doubled to $14 trillion between 2000 and 2007. This build up of debt was responsible for the ensuing havoc because of its effect on borrowers, Mian and Sufi argue.

To understand this argument, consider mortgage borrowers versus those who invest in their mortgages via bank deposits. The borrowers tend to be poorer than the investors, who have spare cash. As Mian and Sufi put it, a poor man’s loan is a rich man’s asset.

However, the risk distribution is highly asymmetric because mortgage holders have a senior claim on property while the borrowers’ equity claim is junior, and gets wiped out first. When US house prices fell from late 2006 onwards, losses were concentrated among the poorest segment of the population who had levered exposure, while the richest segment ““ the savers ““ were cushioned.

That explains why inequality increased during the Great Recession, but Mian and Sufi don’t stop there. Using economic analysis that reads like a detective story, they show how the evaporation of poor peoples’ wealth led to a collapse in spending, effectively causing the Great Recession itself. To show causality, they point out that spending initially fell the most in areas of biggest housing wealth declines.

Niedrigzinsangst

29 October 2014Insurancecentral banks, deflation, government bonds, insurance, interest rate risk, Stress testsNick Dunbar

Why can't the ECB bring itself to stress test banks for deflation? I was thinking about this question when I remembered an episode from the past. Just over ten years ago, I took a train from Frankfurt to the sleepy spa town of Wiesbaden. It was the sort of place where a lone taxi is…

Lost Lobos

24 October 2014Municipal Financederivatives, Kent council, municipal finance, public policyNick Dunbar

For as long as most people can remember, UK municipal finance has been safe and boring. In the wild days of the 1980s, Hammersmith & Fulham council almost went bust speculating in derivatives, and was saved by a landmark House of Lords ruling. Since then, UK council borrowing has been tightly constrained by central government while derivative use has been banned.

Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises

23 September 2014Articles, Book Reviewscentral bankingNick Dunbar

by Timothy F Geithner (Random House 2014) If you had perfect foresight and were going to pick the best regulator or policymaker capable of dealing with the global financial crisis and its aftermath, whom would you choose? You'd probably want someone with a track record of dealing directly with crises, perhaps in emerging markets, and…

Through the eyes of a speculator

15 September 2014Markets, Mergers & acquisitionsM&A, mergers & acquisitionsNick Dunbar

Outside of financial crises, mergers and acquisitions are the closest the stock market comes to high drama. Companies in play engage with investors and the public using a well-rehearsed script: Acquirers woo target shareholders while target companies publicise the value of independence. The biggest, most dramatic takeovers can involve antitrust regulators and politicians as well.…

Fear and liquidity in the high-yield market

19 August 2014Credit, MarketsETFs, investing, trading, US high yieldNick Dunbar

Junk bond funds are seeing record outflows. This has been described as a 'six-sigma event', in other words, six standard deviations away from the mean weekly flow, something that if normally distributed should only be expected once in millions of years. By definition that's unusual, but in the context of broader investment in riskier corporate…

Volcker Sunlight Should be the Best Disinfectant

25 July 2014Banks, Financialsbanking, JP Morgan, regulation, regulatory VaR, risk models, stress VaRNick Dunbar

On the fourth anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act, the big US banks are still black boxes in terms of their trading activity. However regulators are now getting a bit more information. Over the last month, the big banks have started providing them with so-called reporting metrics under the Volcker Rule, so that the rule’s curbs on proprietary trading can be enforced.

The In/Out Question and European Spring

18 June 2014Book ReviewsEuropean Spring, Philippe LegrainNick Dunbar

The In/Out Question: Why Britain should stay in the EU and fight to make it better by Hugo Dixon (Kindle Single, 130pp) European Spring: Why our Economies and Politics are in a Mess and How to Put Them Right by Philippe Legrain (Amazon print-on-demand, 448pp) As the May elections to its parliament showed, the…

Disruptive Business Models, Uber and Plane Crashes

30 January 2014Technologyinnovation, technology, transportation, UberNick Dunbar

Disruptive internet-based business models have upended traditional industries like recorded music, newspapers and retailing. The latest flurry of innovation involves start-ups that take a service traditionally provided by a regulated firm - such as a hotel or taxi company - transforming it into commission-paying transactions between buyers and sellers. Accessed via smartphone apps and 'regulated'…

Most-read articles of 2013

30 December 2013ArticlesNick Dunbar, web statisticsNick Dunbar

As the year ends, I thought it would be interesting to share with you the most-read articles on this website for 2013. Unsurprisingly, the review of Nassim Taleb's bookÂ Antifragile takes first place. Published just over a year ago, this review not only got the most views in the past year, but is the most-read article…

The New York Fed, Goldman and Regulating Conflicts

17 October 2013BanksGoldman Sachs, litigation, New York Fed, regulationNick Dunbar

In a week dominated by the government shutdown, the most interesting financial regulatory story to come out of the US was the lawsuit by former employee Carmen Segarra against the New York Fed. The lawsuit, which was first reported by Propublica on October 10 and widely covered afterwards, alleges that the NY Fed unjustly fired…

Confidence, Doubt and Climate Change

4 October 2013Articlesclimate change, physics, public policyNick Dunbar

24 years ago I was a graduate student studying earth and planetary science at Harvard. My advisor, Professor Mike McElroy, was an expert on atmospheric chemistry and I helped him teach a course to 300 undergrads in what was known as the 'core curriculum'. As a special treat for the students, McElroy invited his friend,…

ICAP, the half-way house on the road to Libor reckoning

27 September 2013Banks, MarketsICAP, interest rate benchmarks, litigation, operational risk, RBS, regulation, UBSNick Dunbar

What are we to learn from the charges that came out against interdealer broker ICAP and its staff over the manipulation of Libor rates? In three separate regulatory complaints, from the UK Financial Conduct Authority, US Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Department of Justice, once again we read emails and chat logs outlining intent to…

JPMorgan vs. Fukushima

30 August 2013Articles, Banksbanking, Basel rules, comprehensive risk measure, incremental risk charge, JP Morgan, operational risk, regulatory VaRNick Dunbar

After JP Morgan’s London Whale fiasco, the new trading book risk measures introduced by Basel after the financial crisis began to be supplanted by operational risk capital.

Quant Investing Comes of Age

16 August 2013Articles, Fundsfactor models, fund management, investing, MSCI Barra, smart betaNick Dunbar

When I wrote the Devil's Derivatives I looked at the risk modelling behind the ratings of CDOs, bank trading and credit portfolios. Through a combination of bad incentives and leverage, these models performed very badly and contributed to the financial meltdown of 2007-8. Lurking in the background of my analysis was traditional portfolio modelling as…

Of Fear and Models

22 July 2013BanksBasel rules, BNP Paribas, leverage ratios, risk models, sovereignNick Dunbar

My last post on Anglo-Irish Bank got me thinking some more about the question of trust and banking. The subject came up in conversations I recently had with senior bankers - BNP Paribas co-chief operating officer Philippe Bordenave and Deutsche Bank CFO Stefan Krause. I asked them about the declining trust in bank risk models,…

Basel, Bayes and Anglo’s Arse-Picking

5 July 2013Articles, BanksAnglo Irish Bank, banking, Basel rules, eurozoneNick Dunbar

The leaked tapes of conversations between two senior Anglo-Irish Bank officials in September 2008 highlights the problem that bankers can't be trusted. Discussing the size of bailout they should request from Irish taxpayers, the Anglo-Irish bankers were recorded saying that the €7 billion figure was "picked out of my arse" (the actual amount needed would…

Regulatory Tussle over Bail-Ins, Depositors Highlights Complexity of Bank Debt

4 June 2013Articles, Banksbank debt, bank resolution, banking, Basel rulesNick Dunbar

Before the financial crisis began in 2007, banks created and invested in trillions of dollars of complex securities such as collateralized debt obligations. Many of these investments subsequently defaulted or lost the top ratings given to them by ratings companies. With investors suspicious of anything valued or rated using hard-to-fathom models, markets in CDOs and…

Quantitative Easing, Interest-Rate Derivatives: A Toxic Combination

17 May 2013Banks, Commentderivatives, interest rate risk, litigation, municipal finance, RBSNick Dunbar

Quantitative easing has resulted in collateral damage. Municipalities, public-owned entities and small companies have been damaged as a result of derivatives contracts that locked them into paying high interest rates before the full effect of QE became apparent. Investment banks that sold such contracts have been accused of mis-selling them, lawsuits are winding their way…

Bank leverage and the lessons of the crisis

19 March 2013Articles, BanksAccounting, Cyprus, deposits, leverage ratiosNick Dunbar

"The final banking crisis, which terminated in the banking holiday early in March 1933" - So begins a dark passage in Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz's Monetary History of the United States, which last Friday arose from ancient slumbers in the eastern Mediterranean. The turmoil sparked by the proposed tax on Cyprus bank depositors makes…

The Higgs boson and me

18 July 2012CommentNick Dunbar, physicsNick Dunbar

I first encountered the Higgs boson in 1989 on a blackboard in an advanced quantum field theory class for graduate students at Harvard University. It was the point that I realized that the life of a theoretical physicist was not for me. I remember the lecture theatre well. There were three blackboards side by side,…

A week in banking: what have we learned?

2 July 2012Articles, Banksbanking, Barclays, derivatives, interest rate benchmarks, JP Morgan, RBS, regulationNick Dunbar

In the last week, we saw major developments in two big scandals - Libor rigging and swap mis-selling in the UK - and the end of the second quarter which is likely to draw a line under a third big scandal - the 'London Whale' losses at JP Morgan. I have some thoughts about these…

Nature Bites Back In New, Messy World of Derivatives

4 May 2012Bankscredit valuation adjustment, derivatives, physics, risk modelsNick Dunbar

Twelve years ago, in 'Inventing Money' I explained the principles of option pricing to a general audience. Although the maths looked complicated, the financial market that Fischer Black, Robert Merton and Myron Scholes modeled in the early 1970s was really quite simple. You bought and sold derivatives, such as options or forward contracts, and traded…

From the UK to Italy, an interest rate derivatives headache

19 March 2012Economics, Insurancebanking, behavioural economics, derivatives, interest rate risk, Italy, Morgan StanleyNick Dunbar

My story (with Elisa Martinuzzi) about Italy admitting it paid Morgan Stanley billions to unwind derivatives, and the UK newspaper coverage reporting on the alleged mis-selling of derivatives by banks like Barclays to small British companies, have something in common. Small British companies and Italy share an environment where both of them are finding it…

Déjà Vu All Over Again

8 August 2011Articlescentral banking, eurozone, sovereign debtNick Dunbar

Are we on the verge of another Lehman weekend? The crisis of September 2008 unfolded in several stages: 1) a long bubble in subprime and credit markets in general, in which Lehman and other banks profited from by increasing their balance sheet leverage, 2) following a realisation that subprime was a haven of fraudulent lending,…

The Devil’s Derivatives is published

12 July 2011ArticlesDevil's Derivatives, Nick DunbarNick Dunbar

In January 2008, I scribbled down some ideas for a book about what was then a crisis sparked by subprime mortgages, based on my decade of experience writing about financial derivatives. Three-and-a-half years later, the book has now been published. It was the feeling of being trapped inside history that prompted me to write the…

A vision for Europe and its discontents

10 May 2011Articlespublic policy, regulationNick Dunbar

Today, I participated in a panel discussion at the Economist Bellwether Europe conference on 'A Vision for Europe', together with Estonian finance minister JÃ¼rgen Ligi, head of markets at the UK Financial Services Authority Alexander Justham, and the chief executive of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe, Simon Lewis. Below are my answers to…

Nudge and Predictably Irrational

13 January 2010Articles, Book Reviewsbehavioural economics, Cass Sunstein, Dan Ariely, Nudge, Predictably Irrational, Richard ThalerNick Dunbar

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein ( Yale University Press, 2008) Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely (Harper Collins, 2008) Just over a year ago, I made a rough estimate of the size of my income tax bill that I would…

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