Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Please Dr. Yellen, are we taking enough risk yet?

An article in the FT by Patrick Jenkins yesterday identified 5 dangerous bubbles: 

1.      Leveraged loans.  Securities representing $260 bn in covenant light loans were issued in 2013, up 69% from previous peak in 2007. 
2.      ETFs.  Liquid securities composed of increasingly illiquid assets that must be liquidated as EFT's are redeemed have proliferated.
3.      Eurozone sovereign debt.  Peripheral countries like Portugal are paying the same rate as the US treasury.  (Does this reflect overconfidence in Portugal or lack of confidence in the US?) 
4.       European bank paper.    A DB-issued cramdown hybrid bond was 10x oversubscribed, and Spanish non-performing loans quoted at prices that would yield 14% were they paying, which they are not. 

5.      UK property in the southeast.  London house prices have gone from 4x the average earnings of first time buyers to 8x.

No comments:

Post a Comment