October 20, 2009

Here’s a scary thought from Comrade Peace Prize:

Obama administration advisers said U.S. banks bailed out with taxpayer funds have responsibility to support the president’s effort to overhaul the rules for Wall Street and avoid future financial crises.

White House officials say they are frustrated that major financial firms are fighting President Barack Obama on the regulatory overhaul after taxpayer bailouts helped firms restore profits and near-record compensation for executives.

“The American people have a right to be frustrated and angry,” Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said on CNN’s “State of the Union” yesterday. Banks receiving aid are “literally going and fighting the very type of regulations and reforms that are necessary to prevent, again, a crisis like this happening.”

After reading the promise that this legislation will tame the business cycle, do you have to read any more? I wouldn’t link to a blog that made that claim … but this is the White House Chief of Staff who’s being quoted!

I haven’t studied the legislation in any detail – but if the best supporting argument they can come up with is ‘You guys screwed up last time, therefore this is right” then it must be pretty bogus.

The SEC is proposing to restrict dark pool trading:

The commission will propose lowering the amount of daily volume in a company’s shares that can be executed in private on any of the networks to 0.25 percent from 5 percent at a hearing tomorrow in Washington, said the people, who declined to be identified because the discussions weren’t public. John Nester, an SEC spokesman, declined to comment.

The rule change may curtail the number of transactions on dark pools, off-exchange platforms run by firms such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Getco LLC that have drawn scrutiny from Democratic Senators Ted Kaufman of Delaware and Charles Schumer of New York. The systems usually shut down trading in a security when they approach the current 5 percent limit.

I’m not sufficiently familiar with dark pools to have a definite opinion on the matter, but my knee-jerk reaction is that this is simply the established exchanges using the current ‘Regulation = Good’ hysteria to advance their interests. The OSC has highlighted a CSA / IIROC Request for Comments on the topic. Interestingly, support for giving the regulators a blank cheque is waning:

A poll conducted for Public Strategies and Politico found that 32 percent of voters support new regulations, while 68 percent say better enforcement of existing regulations is the best approach.

The top pollster for the survey, David Iannelli, said a previous poll conducted in December during the height of the Wall Street meltdown found that 67 percent of those surveyed believed more regulations were needed.

The poll can be found at www.pstrategies.com.

State Street is alleged to have been naughty:

The case was originally filed under seal by whistleblowers – “Associates Against FX Insider Trading,” who alleged that State Street added a secret and substantial mark-up to the price of interbank foreign currency trades. The interbank rate is the price at which major banks buy and sell foreign currency.

Subsequently, Brown launched an independent investigation into the allegations.

Brown’s investigation revealed that State Street was indeed overcharging the two funds. Despite being contractually obligated to charge the interbank rate at the precise time of the trade, State Street consistently charged at or near the highest rate of the day, even if the interbank rate was lower at the time of trade.

So my question is: who was authorizing the FX trades on the pension fund side? who was checking the trades on the pension fund side? Have they been fired? If nobody was checking and portfolio managers are executing really cool trades without nailing down the FX conversion, has the CEO been fired? This isn’t “the latest example of how clever financial traders violate laws and rip off the public trust”; given that it’s been happening routinely for eight years, its just the latest example of brain-dead portfolio managment.

Red letter day today, as PerpetualDiscounts were up … a whole half bp! FixedResets gained 7bp; there wasn’t much price volatility, but volume was good, with the volume highlights table being entirely FixedResets.

HIMIPref™ Preferred Indices
These values reflect the December 2008 revision of the HIMIPref™ Indices

Values are provisional and are finalized monthly
Index Mean
Current
Yield
(at bid)
Median
YTW
Median
Average
Trading
Value
Median
Mod Dur
(YTW)
Issues Day’s Perf. Index Value
Ratchet 0.00 % 0.00 % 0 0.00 0 -0.4053 % 1,459.5
FixedFloater 6.13 % 4.25 % 47,651 18.53 1 -2.9524 % 2,543.0
Floater 2.67 % 3.11 % 100,218 19.47 3 -0.4053 % 1,823.4
OpRet 4.90 % -7.84 % 113,770 0.09 15 0.0334 % 2,281.0
SplitShare 6.44 % 6.51 % 541,050 3.95 2 -0.3759 % 2,054.4
Interest-Bearing 0.00 % 0.00 % 0 0.00 0 0.0334 % 2,085.8
Perpetual-Premium 5.92 % 5.93 % 143,593 13.92 11 0.2583 % 1,846.4
Perpetual-Discount 5.97 % 6.03 % 218,758 13.85 63 0.0056 % 1,735.3
FixedReset 5.51 % 4.23 % 451,062 4.02 41 0.0700 % 2,107.4
Performance Highlights
Issue Index Change Notes
BAM.PR.G FixedFloater -2.95 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2039-10-20
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 17.75
Bid-YTW : 4.25 %
RY.PR.D Perpetual-Discount -1.44 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2039-10-20
Maturity Price : 19.81
Evaluated at bid price : 19.81
Bid-YTW : 5.78 %
BAM.PR.B Floater -1.41 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2039-10-20
Maturity Price : 12.62
Evaluated at bid price : 12.62
Bid-YTW : 3.14 %
BAM.PR.J OpRet -1.28 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Soft Maturity
Maturity Date : 2018-03-30
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 24.75
Bid-YTW : 5.63 %
CIU.PR.A Perpetual-Discount 1.03 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2039-10-20
Maturity Price : 19.61
Evaluated at bid price : 19.61
Bid-YTW : 5.96 %
BMO.PR.L Perpetual-Premium 1.05 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2039-10-20
Maturity Price : 24.69
Evaluated at bid price : 24.91
Bid-YTW : 5.92 %
BNS.PR.N Perpetual-Discount 1.28 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2039-10-20
Maturity Price : 22.75
Evaluated at bid price : 22.90
Bid-YTW : 5.75 %
IAG.PR.A Perpetual-Discount 1.44 % YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Limit Maturity
Maturity Date : 2039-10-20
Maturity Price : 19.02
Evaluated at bid price : 19.02
Bid-YTW : 6.12 %
Volume Highlights
Issue Index Shares
Traded
Notes
MFC.PR.D FixedReset 63,173 TD crossed two blocks of 13,600 and one of 13,000, all at 27.76.
YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2014-07-19
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 27.80
Bid-YTW : 4.17 %
TD.PR.S FixedReset 60,015 RBC crossed blocks of 20,000 and 25,000 shares, both at 25.50.
YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2018-08-30
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 25.50
Bid-YTW : 4.35 %
CM.PR.L FixedReset 53,478 Desjardins bought 37,300 from CIBC at 27.28.
YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2014-05-30
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 27.28
Bid-YTW : 4.32 %
TRP.PR.A FixedReset 48,694 Recent new issue.
YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2015-01-30
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 25.20
Bid-YTW : 4.51 %
RY.PR.X FixedReset 46,602 Scotia bought 10,000 from RBC at 27.99.
YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2014-09-23
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 27.80
Bid-YTW : 4.01 %
TD.PR.E FixedReset 39,525 TD crossed 20,000 at 27.20.
YTW SCENARIO
Maturity Type : Call
Maturity Date : 2014-05-30
Maturity Price : 25.00
Evaluated at bid price : 27.17
Bid-YTW : 4.19 %
There were 37 other index-included issues trading in excess of 10,000 shares.

One Response to “October 20, 2009”

  1. […] The SEC has released statements regarding the Dark Pool debate discussed yesterday. […]

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