Housing Slump in U.S. Poised to Worsen, Derivatives Trades Show

es sieht so aus als wenn in der tat der mbs markt langsam aber sicher die risiken besser einpreist.

it really lokks like the secoundarymarket is finally waking up. wonder why i took so long.......

dank geht an ca renter und benhttp://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=1680#comments

Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- The slumping U.S. housing market is about to get a lot worse, according to traders of mortgage-backed securities and the so-called derivatives on which they are based.
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The ABX index, which measures the risk of owning bonds backed by home-loans to people with poor credit, rose 30 percent since Aug. 9 to the highest since January. There are more than $500 billion of such notes outstanding.

The increase in the index shows traders expect mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures to increase at a time when the number of homes for sale as measured by the National Association of Realtors is at a 13-year high. The percentage of home-loan payments more than 60 days delinquent rose to 7.23 percent in July from 5.9 percent a year earlier, the fastest rate of increase since 1998, Moody's Investors Service said Oct. 17. .....

ABX Index
The ABX index, created by London-based Markit Group Ltd., measures prices of credit-default swaps based on the $565 billion of bonds secured by so-called subprime mortgages and home-equity loans. Credit-default swaps are financial instruments based on bonds and loans that are used to speculate on the ability of borrowers to repay debt. An increase in price indicates deterioration in the perception of credit quality; a decline suggests improvement.

The index tracks 20 asset-backed securities that contain loans rated BBB-, the lowest level of investment grade debt. Based on the index, it costs an investor $267,000 to protect $10 million of bonds against default for five years, up from $205,000 in August. The investor would get face value for the bonds in exchange for the securities should a borrower fail to adhere to the debt agreements.

`Unequivocally Bad'
``The unequivocally bad housing data we've seen'' is prompting investors to seek to profit from potential declines in mortgage-backed securities, said Greg Lippmann, the head of asset-backed trading at Deutsche Bank AG in New York who helped create the ABX indexes in January.

Contracts covering $5 billion of home-loan debt change hands daily,.....

About 18 percent of all mortgages issued in the first half of the year were to borrowers considered most likely to default, such as those with high credit-card balances, up from 2.4 percent in 1998, based on data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The Washington-based trade group's 2,700 members represent 70 percent of the home-loan business.

The amount of bonds backed by subprime loans more than doubled since 2001, ....

Worst Month
A Merrill Lynch & Co. index of debt securities derived from home-equity loans rated AA to BBB is having its worst month this year, falling 0.01 percent. Banks and lenders such as Countrywide Financial Corp. in Calabasas, California, and Washington Mutual Inc. of Seattle typically take mortgages and package them into bonds for sale to investors. The bonds are then divided into pieces of varying risk.

The default rate for subprime loans rose to 7.35 percent in July from 5.51 percent a year earlier,

Nine percent of all subprime loans made in 2006 may default within five years, the worst performance since at least 1998, .....

Falling Prices
.... The inventory of homes on the market rose to a record 3.92 million,

Most credit-default swap trading is in securities rated BBB or BBB- because they are the most volatile and have the greatest chance to be profitable,....

Subprime mortgages with those credit ratings historically have had losses of about 5 percent of the loan value, McCleary said. Some investors are betting that losses may increase to 12 to 14 percent in the next three years, which could exponentially increase value of credit-default swaps, he said.

``In effect, it's a lottery ticket,'' he said.