Corporate Bonds Best Safe Haven from $10-Trillion Wipeout
Sep 12th, 2008 | By Charles Delvalle | Category: Featured, Financial NewsLosses of $500-$600 billion are enough to make anyone shudder. But Charles Delvalle says these estimates don’t come close to measuring the eventual fallout of the current credit crisis.
Credit losses could reach $2 trillion. That translates to $10 trillion of liquidity wiped out, using a very conservative estimate of leveraging (Lehman Bros (NYSE:LEH) had a leverage ratio of over 30 last year).
Charles says we could be entering the biggest deflationary period since the Great Depression. The best protection lies in top grade corporate bonds.
This from Investor’s Daily Edge:
One day you’ll hear about an $8 billion fund going under. Yet, if it’s a mutual fund or hedge fund that loses the $8 billion, then it doesn’t seem like much. After all, some funds have in excess of $100 billion in assets.
Freddie and Fannie both control nearly half of a $12 trillion mortgage market. Suddenly, even $80 billion seems like a pittance.
Yet, this is still nothing.
China has currency reserves approaching $2 trillion. The FOREX market has about $4 trillion flowing through it. The US GDP hovers around $13 trillion. Global GDP is a little over $54 trillion.
Eh, that’s still not that much money. Want to see a big sum of money?
The global derivatives market is worth about $516 trillion.
With sums that large, it’s hard to feel moved by $500 billion in bank losses. Yet I’m still amazed when people assume that we might only lose $500 – $600 billion.
The mortgage market is worth about $12 trillion. Consumer Credit in the US alone is about $2.59 trillion. So far, the losses we’ve seen are only 3.4 percent of the consumer credit and mortgage credit available.
Do you think the biggest real estate slowdown we’ve ever seen… combined with the biggest bailouts the government has ever made… will only create losses of 3.4 percent of the total mortgage and consumer credit out there? Not a chance.
INTERNAL ENDORSEMENT
Stock Market Shocker: How a Bunch of
5th Graders Made Fools of the Trading Elite…!
Wall Street wants you to believe that you have to entrust your money with the professionals and all their skills, resources and systems, if you want to make money in the markets. It’s what these guys do for a living! How could you possibly beat them?!
Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I have used an embarrassingly simple secret to make $15,048 in just 30 days… and boost my overall account balance 152% in less than a year.
Losses will grow as more people miss their mortgage payments. Defaults will grow as credit card debt overwhelms people who just lost their jobs. Defaults will grow as more banks, mutual funds, and hedge funds fail. This doesn’t even account for the losses both Fannie and Freddie will accrue while under government ‘conservatorship’.
The government has promised to infuse a combined $200 billion into these companies should they need it. And that doesn’t include the $2 billion in preferred shares that the government bought. You can be sure that if they need even more money, the government will give it to them because they now have a vested interest in not allowing these institutions to fail.In all, the government wants you to believe that a portfolio of over $5 trillion mortgages, in the midst of the worst real estate slowdown since the great depression, will only lose $200 billion. That’s less than five percent.
Does Uncle Sam think we’re fools?
This is what we’re dealing with: One of Washington Mutual’s Alt-A (no doc loans) mortgage pools (WMALT 2007-0C1) is showing 25 percent of its mortgages as 60 days late, and 13 percent of them are in foreclosure.
This pool was originally rated AAA, but looking at its condition right now, you’d have never guessed it.
Defaults on credit cards are rising. Defaults on mortgages (all types, even prime) continue to rise. Commercial property defaults are moving higher. Corporations are maxing out their credit lines, and corporate defaults are picking up.
It doesn’t sound like an end is near for credit losses.
You should expect them to rise well over $1 trillion. They could hit $2 trillion or more by the time all is said and done.
Of course, what isn’t mentioned is how all of this credit was leveraged. If we are conservative and estimate that this credit was leveraged by five times, then a $1 trillion credit loss turns into a $5 trillion liquidity loss. A $2 trillion loss becomes a $10 trillion liquidity loss.
$10 trillion is only $3 trillion shy of being as large as the US GDP.
You can imagine the effect that type of loss would have on the global economy. Actually, you don’t have to imagine too much, because it’s going on right before your very eyes.
This deleveraging could turn out to be one of the biggest deflationary events since the Great Depression. So I hope you are prepared for it.
Financials will continue to get slammed in the meantime. Commodities won’t have the same ‘fire’ we saw over the past few years. And debt-heavy corporations will find it harder to roll over their bonds.
I wish I could give you the answer du jour – to buy gold and silver. But gold and silver don’t do well in deflationary environments. So I expect them to underperform over the next twelve months.
The truth is, picking stocks in this environment is going to be rather difficult. As money disappears from the credit markets, the deleveraging it causes will bring down the overall value of stocks, commodities, and real estate.
Financials will continue to get slammed in the meantime. Commodities won’t have the same ‘fire’ we saw over the past few years. And debt-heavy corporations will find it harder to roll over their bonds.
I wish I could give you the answer du jour – to buy gold and silver. But gold and silver don’t do well in deflationary environments. So I expect them to underperform over the next twelve months.
The truth is, picking stocks in this environment is going to be rather difficult. As money disappears from the credit markets, the deleveraging it causes will bring down the overall value of stocks, commodities, and real estate.
My only recommendation to you is to begin looking into bonds. Because very strong companies have bond yields that boggle the mind. I’m talking about eight to nine percent in interest alone.
In a market where most assets are falling, the corporate bond market is one of the safest places to put your money.
Luckily enough, we found a way to get you names of very high-quality bonds, with above-average yields, and very little interest rate or default risk.
Just go here to find out how to get more information absolutely free.
Source: A $10 Trillion Problem
Advertisement
Eliminate the Risk of Your Bank Going Under…
You can't turn on the news today without hearing about another bank that has been sold or needs to be bailed out by the government. Why put your money at risk when you could open an account and let the Swiss government refill it every morning with stable and rising francs…and withdraw it whenever you want using your ATM card?
Billionaire television analyst Peter Schiff will show you exactly how to save your cash, and add to it too – by as much as 5 times over the next 9 months. Click here to get started.
Charles Delvalle is a self-taught market-timing professional and value analyst who's followed and invested in the market for the past ten years. He uses a unique combination of technical and fundamental research to pinpoint rapid profit opportunities with stocks and options.
Charles is also a staunch contrarian and takes pride in finding undervalued sectors and discovering undervalued, cash-rich companies. He frequently mocks government stupidities and points out the "inaccuracies (or lies, take your pick) that government reporting frequently dispels as "truth".
