PIMCO Does Not Believe In Relative Value

In the accompanying presentation, it is easy to see why Bill Gross' PIMCO is highly bullish on credit of any variety. As the table below demonstrates, taken straight out of the biggest bond fund's May 2009 presentation "Investing for the Journey and the Destination: What it means across the Capital Structure" PIMCO doesn't see any overvalued instruments in the credit realm: MBS, IG, EM and HY/Loans all have wonderfully green and positive metrics in the valuation column. As for products, while PIMCO believes that fundamentals, technicals, valuations and policy support are all "positive" exclusively for Mortgage Backed Securities, in essence this is merely window dressing for justifying to investors (and the SEC) that after every 7 am conversation with Tim Geithner, in which the latter tells Bill that he will buy yet another $20-30 billion in MBS that week, that PIMCO will be frontrunning the taxpayers in purchasing a boatload of Fannie 30 Years.



Yet with all the greenery, following the recent collapse in mortgages, and the explosion of the 30 Yr - 10 Yr UST spread, Bill may reconsider changing some of the exuberant optimism. To wit: Mr Gross may want to learn about such credit phenomena as cumulative losses and loss severities: both of which may precipitate some of the greenery into shrinkage. As Zero Hedge pointed out earlier, assuming 10 cent recoveries on upcoming defaults, the extrapolated cumulative losses could be dramatic: up to 50% of HY names may end up in default (of course that is backing into an estimate based on market trading levels of HY12). But even at half this loss level, the case will end up being that 1 out of 4 names will pay at most 2-3 bi annual coupons before payments stop, and the hot potato will have to find the most gullible investor. Of course with over a trillion notional in all possible credit instruments, PIMCO will perpetuate the "all is great" fallacy for as long as possible because as much as it tries, there is simply not a fool with a large enough balance sheet to purchase all of Gross increasingly distressed securities.



Hat tip Richard Sphere: Related Content

Bookmark this post with:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Print this post