A soft fourth quarter resulted in a modest uptick in non-mortgage ABS in 2016, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking and analysis. A few sectors posted solid gains, however. The market produced $174.71 billion of new ABS last year, up just 0.6 percent from the total for 2015. New issuance turned decidedly soft in the fourth quarter with only $34.24 billion in volume. That was down 36.7 percent from the previous period and represented the second-lowest quarterly output since the third quarter of 2012. All the major components of the ABS market saw...[Includes two data tables]
Moody’s Investors Service agreed to a $863.79 million settlement with the Department of Justice, 21 states and Washington, DC, late last week. The settlement focused on rating activities between 2004 and 2010 involving residential MBS and collateralized debt obligations. According to the settlement, Moody’s used an internal ratings model for most tranches of certain residential MBS that was more lenient than its published guidelines, allowing for lower credit enhancement levels than what the published guidelines required. The internal model was based...
International Value Advisors recently cut its stake in Annaly Capital Management – the nation’s largest mortgage real estate investment trust – by roughly half, a development that could be repeated by other investors as rising rates cause new concerns about MBS prices. At year-end, International owned 4.55 percent of Annaly compared to 9.60 percent a year earlier. Annaly’s largest investment is in agency MBS, of which it owned $73.5 billion at Sept. 30. The publicly traded REIT is...
As a number of shareholder lawsuits against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hang in the balance, a new administration offers reasons for some to be optimistic on the cases coming to a close and the Treasury’s sweep of the government-sponsored enterprises’ profits coming to an end. During a Jan. 18 call hosted by Investors Unite, legal experts weighed in on the outlook for GSE shareholder cases just days before the inauguration. Plaintiffs have been arguing that a government bailout of the GSEs and the subsequent Treasury sweep was unnecessary and illegal. “As GSE shareholders, we are...
The residential MBS market is expected to be healthy this year, according to some ratings service analysts. But the new president is the big unknown, market participants say. According to analysts at Fitch Ratings, the rating outlook for U.S. RMBS they rate is auspicious, as they expect asset performance trends to stay positive thanks to support from solid, if somewhat uneven, gains in home prices. “Although a number of legacy transactions continue to face negative rating pressure due to declining loan counts and tail risk, rating upgrades outnumbered...
Credit quality for the loans backing unique warehouse-funding securitizations from Jefferies Funding remains strong, according to Moody’s Investors Service. One of the risks was that weaker collateral could be included in the transactions as time passed. The $225.0 million Station Place Securitization Trust 2016-1 received Aaa ratings from Moody’s last February and a $210.0 million 2016-3 transaction issued in May garnered an with Aaa rating. The rating service evaluated the deals recently as the 2016-1 securitization is set to pay down next month. “To date, there has been...
After a two-year rollercoaster ride through the court system that ended in 2015, a former Wall Street trader finds himself facing another trial in an MBS fraud case. Jess Litvak, a former bond trader with the Jeffries Group, will go on trial again after a jury found him guilty in 2014 of violating securities laws. He was accused of fraud and misleading investors about the price he had paid for residential MBS. According to attorneys with the law firm of Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas in Houston, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Connecticut originally brought...
As one former GSE stock analyst told us: “There’s no way they can be privatized. To maintain an AAA rating they would need 25 percent (I’m guessing) capital to assets. Even at 5 percent there is not enough spread to earn a market return on capital.”
With President-elect Donald Trump set to take office and Republicans in control of Congress, trade groups representing banks reiterated calls for revisions to standards for qualified mortgages. Banks are pushing for QM status to be applied to any mortgage held in portfolio, even if the loans have characteristics that would otherwise make them non-QMs subject to greater liability. In a letter this month to leaders of Congress, Rob Nichols, president and CEO of the American Bankers Association ...
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