Bear, Lehman, Merrill, Goldman Traded as Junk, Derivatives Show

Now we have gone from almost junk in March to finally junk. We will see if the rating agencies are correct in giving all the players still very high investment grade ratings. S&P has taken the lead with yesterdays action on Morgan Stanley.

GS & co sind über fast Junk im März nun bei Junk angelangt. Wir werden sehen ob die Rating Agenturen mit Ihrer Einschätzung der hohen A und AA hier richtig liegen.

S&P raises Morgan Stanley debt rating to "AA-minus".
Standard & Poor's on Monday raised its debt rating for Morgan Stanley, citing strength in the bank's core investment banking and trading businesses.

S&P raised Morgan Stanley's senior unsecured debt rating to "AA-minus," the fourth highest investment grade rating, from "A-plus."

>At least for now the market has spoken.......

>Momentan sieht der Markt das etwas anders.......


Thanks to benj

July 31 (Bloomberg) -- On Wall Street, Bear Stearns Cos., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., are as good as junk.

Bonds of U.S. investment banks lost about $1.5 billion of their face value this month as the risk of owning the securities increased the most since at least October 2004, according to Merrill indexes. Prices of credit-default swaps based on the debt imply that their credit ratings are below investment grade, data compiled by Moody's Investors Service show.

bigger/größer

Thanks to Kevin Duffy / LewRockwell

The highest level of defaults in 10 years on subprime mortgages and a $33 billion pileup of unsold bonds and loans for funding acquisitions are driving investors away from debt of the New York-based securities firms. Concerns about credit quality may get worse because banks promised to provide $300 billion in debt for leveraged buyouts announced this year.


Credit-default swaps tied to $10 million of bonds sold by Bear Stearns, the second-largest underwriter of mortgage bonds, rose to about $110,000 on July 27, from $30,000 at the start of June, indicating growing investor concerns.

`Wall of Worry'
Prices of credit-default swaps for Goldman, the biggest investment bank by market value, Merrill, the third largest, and Lehman, the No. 1 mortgage bond underwriter, also equate to a Ba1 rating, data from Moody's credit strategy group show. Bonds of New York-based Goldman and Merrill are rated Aa3, seven levels higher than swaps suggest. Lehman is rated A1, the same as Bear Stearns.

About 1 percent of the thousands of companies followed by Moody's have a gap of more than five levels between their actual and implied rankings, analyst Tony Smith said in a July 19 report titled ``Broker Securities Climb a Wall of Worry.''

> Here is another one

Losing Value
Investment-grade bonds of brokerage firms lost 0.47 percent on average since June, while securities with similar ratings returned 0.19 percent, according to Merrill indexes. Finance companies are the biggest part of the corporate bond market, accounting for 40 percent of the $2 trillion of debt outstanding, according to New York-based Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest investment bank by market value.


Investors demand an extra 1.25 percentage points in yield to own the bonds of brokers instead of Treasuries, up from a low of 0.64 percentage point on Jan. 29. The wider spread represents an extra $6 million in annual interest for every $1 billion they borrow. ....

Bond and credit-default swap prices suggest Wall Street firms are no safer for debt investors than companies teetering on the edge of investment grade, including mining company Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. in Phoenix and Stamford, Connecticut-based copy machine maker Xerox Corp.


Pimco Buys
Pimco bought bonds of banks and brokers in the past two weeks, expecting them to sustain earnings growth and benefit from global mergers and acquisitions, Kiesel said. Profits at Bear Stearns will rise to $14.53 a share this year and $15.66 in 2008 from $14.27 in 2006, according to the average estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 16 analysts.

> I know that bond manager have a different view than equity investors and i respect kiesel. He has written some great reports like "still renting" but to assume that Bear Stearns will have any increase in earnings is just nuts. Bear is the most dependend on the US bondmarket and has almost no international exposure. The only way is able to increase their earnings is to "exclude" special items like losses in subprime exposure. But this would be like GM exclusing losses from their SUV´s.....But i will not rule out that this time we will see new ways of hiding bad numbers :-)

> Ich weiß das Bondinvestoren ein anderes herangehen als Aktieninvestoren haben und ich mag Kiesel von Pimco wirklich sehr. Er hat einige großartige Reports verfasst. Wie man aber allen ernstes darauf kommen kann das ausgerechnet Bears Stearns auch nur annähernd einen Gewinnzuwachs ausweisen kann ist mir schleierhaft. Bear ist die Bank die fast ausschließlich vom US Bondmarkt abhängig ist und kaum internationales Geschäft vorweisen kann. Der einzig mir denkbare Weg Zuwächse zu erzielen ist indem man zum beliebten Mittel greift und "special items" hearusrechnet. Das wäre in diesem Fall aber so als wenn man bei GM die Verluste der SUV´s herausnehmen würde....Das heißt nicht das dies in den USA nicht möglich ist :-)

Marking Down
Bear Stearns analyst Ian Jaffe raised his recommendation on broker debt to ``overweight'' from ``underweight'' on July 13 because risk premiums increased and the economy is growing. Jaffe, who is based in New York, declined to comment.

CreditSights Inc., an independent bond-research firm in New York, also says investors should buy broker bonds.

Disclosure: Short GS, long UBS