Back on March 1st 2007, Toomre Capital Markets LLC ("TCM") created a post entitled Where is Value in Sub-Prime Mortgage Market? In recent days, UBS has announced a further write-down of $10 billion in sub-prime mortgages and CDO securities; London-based HSBC, Paris-based Societe Generale and Germany's WestLB have all rescued their sponsored SIVs either by taking them on to the balance sheet or providing credit lines that ensure that all of the outstanding senior commercial paper will be repaid; and MBIA has announced a $1 billion investment by Warburg Pincus LLC that for at least for a few weeks will help ensured that MBIA maintains its AAA credit enhancement rating. Late on Monday December 10th 2007, Washington Mutual, the United States' largest savings and loan by market value, declared that it was exiting the subprime mortgage business, eliminating another 3,150 jobs and raising some $2.5 billion dollars in additional capital through the issuance of convertible shares.

Based on the recent TCM posts about the perils of reaching for yield and some the enormous losses various financial institutions are taking from their subprime and CDO security activities, a couple of investors have asked Lars Toomre to go back and update his thoughts on that Where is Value in Sub-Prime Mortgage Market? post. Hence, a few hours ahead of the release of Lehman Brothers 4th quarter 2007 earnings release, here goes:

Clearly, Lehman Brothers was wrong back in late February arguing that the sell-off in the ABX index was way overdone. From their historically very tight levels around the start of 2007, the risk premiums for all types of credit investments have dramatically increased. For all practical purposes, the mortgage sector has virtually stopped trading and those risk premiums are now more of a "pick 'em" variety.

So where is value from here? As Lars has preached in many different conversations and written comments, the trade-off from going from a liquid to an illiquid position requires a very significant yield pick-up and recognition that one must be able to live with the illiquid investment for five years or more. Given that criteria, most, if not all, mortgage investments are still not trading cheaply enough to justify going illiquid. Hence, Lars Toomre would recommend that interested institutions remain more in a seller mode than an acquisition mode when considering structured mortgage investments.

As The Wall Street Journal reminded investors, home prices will need to fall about 30 percent to restore their historic relationship to inflation, rents and incomes. Hence, Toomre Capital Markets LLC would urge that investors avoid the mortgage sector for at least another six months as housing prices continue to decline. Whether the popping of the housing bubble will take five or six years as Jim Rogers has argued remains to be seen.

However, clearly the full effects of cheap and easy mortgage credit are not fully reflected in mortgage security valuations. Make a point of following just how badly home equity loans, Pay Option ARMs, other intermediate and hybrid ARMs and the Alt-A security sector will decline in the coming months. While there no doubt will be periodic spikes as people perceive the housing market is bottoming, remember that a 30% price decline is going to turn almost all of these mortgage types into "upside down" positions with borrowers having negative equity in their homes.

An interesting question is just how prevalent the "jingle mail" phenomena will become. Also, remember that the housing price bubble is beginning to deflate during a period of relatively healthy employment. Just imagine how bad the delinquency and default statistics would be if the United States economy were to enter a "normal" recession.

As before, thoughts and comments are most welcome.

As some readers are aware, Toomre Capital Markets LLC ("TCM") is one of the few Capital Markets consultancies with considerable experience in one arcane sector of the securitization markets called insurance-linked securities. Lars Toomre was originally retained in 1997 by what is now known as Munich Re America, Inc. to help that subsidiary of Munich Re thrash out what strategies to pursue in the convergence of the capital markets and more traditional insurance markets driven by fortuitous loss. Partly as a result of that initial strategy work, American Re Financial Products was established to pursue three major initiatives:

• Finite reinsurance (now much discredited after the abuses exposed by the AIG/General Re finite reinsurance abuse scandal)
• Reinsurance of credit enhancement mono-line insurance companies and other credit enhancement opportunities primarily originating from world-wide project finance needs (now shut down due to Munich Re's downgrade from AAA to A in 2001), and
• Creation of American Re Capital Markets to create, underwrite and trade in various insurance-related opportunities such as future film production securitizations, weather derivatives, insurance-linked securities, guarantees of index total rates of return, insurance swaps, the hedging of Enterprise Risk Management exposures and the secondary trading of various property and casualty, health and life insurance policies (now part of Munich Re Capital Markets operation in New York City).

  Lars Toomre ended up joining Munich Re to help establish American Re Capital Markets where he focused on weather derivatives, enterprise risk management

  and other odd-ball initiatives with "hair on them". One of the odd-ball type of requests that periodically would come across the Capital Markets desk concerned "What would Munich Re want to pay for a particular insurance policy (or sometimes portfolio of insurance policies) in the secondary market?" Some of these requests concerned structured settlements, some concerned viatical insurance and some were marketed as "life settlements". Generally, the insurance broker was looking for a better price than what the leading aggregators of the day (generally JG Wentworth or General Re Financial Products) were willing to pay. The type of policy and details within caused the valuations from various sources to often vary considerably.

  Some people have asked why bother with all the complications of acquiring a portfolio of life insurance policies in the secondary market or a diversified portfolio of P&C risks? In short, the answer is that the returns from such diversified portfolios do not correlate with the returns from more traditional investment sectors such as equity, fixed-income, currencies or commodities. Hence, some of the smartest diversified investment companies (like Berkshire Hathaway, PIMCO, Citadel Investments and Greenlight Capital) have made some very significant allocations to insurance, insurance derivatives and insurance-linked securities, particularly because of how this sector risk increases their risk-adjusted returns (as calculated by such measures as the Sharpe Ratio).

  On Monday, November 26th 2007, The Wall Street Journal published a front-page article entitled An Insurance Man Builds A Lively Business in Death written by Liam Pleven and Rachel Emma Silverman. This article describes in quite some detail how life settlement contracts are acquired and some of the pratfalls of dealing with retail clientele that have primary life insurers and regulators warily circling this rapidly expanding industry.

As many readers of the Toomre Capital Markets LLC ("TCM") blog may already be aware, the next Hedge Fund Executive Forum Series event entitled Real-Time Decisions & Risk Reduction: Technologies that Reduce Latency and Sharpen Business Intelligence to Drive Results will be held in New York City on Thursday November 29th 2007 and then repeated in Stamford, CT on Tuesday December 4th. Lars Toomre will be one of the speakers at this event. Both Aldon Hynes and Lars Toomre hope that you will be able to join the Incremax and Toomre Capital Markets team at either of these venues.

These Hedge Fund Executive Forum Series events are designed to help key investment decision makers quickly get beyond buzz words and learn which strategic technologies and solutions will help drive the best results from every aspect of their organization -- the front, middle and back-offices as well as client service functions. Designed for investment managers with more than $500 million in assets under management ("AUM"), the focus of this particular event will be on data, input/output ("I/O") and how "push vs. pull" can be implemented.

The key challenge this forum event will address is how to create better real-time decision opportunities that result from first transforming fast-moving data into information and then into knowledge that ultimately adds to economic value. Some of the key solutions and technologies from Advent Software, AMD, Cisco, Microsoft, Reuters and Streambase Systems will be highlighted for further discussion.

Please circle the appropriate date on your calendar and plan on attending. Advanced registration is required and can be completed at this web link. Aldon Hynes and Lars Toomre look forward to speaking with you directly on the 29th or 4th. Hopefully, we will see you then. Please feel free to contact TCM directly if you have any questions or comments.