Amherst Securities Buys Subprime-Mortgage Bonds, Dobson Says

Discussion in 'Economics' started by ASusilovic, May 14, 2009.

  1. May 14 (Bloomberg) -- Amherst Securities Group, the mortgage-bond specialist that told clients to bet against subprime loans before the market collapsed two years ago, has spent about $150 million buying the securities.

    While it’s possible all subprime borrowers will default on their loans, losses on the foreclosures won’t continue “to rise to the sky,” said Sean Dobson, chief executive officer of the Austin, Texas-based firm.

    “It’s not unreasonable to expect 100 percent of them to default,” Dobson said yesterday in a telephone interview. “It’s probably unreasonable to expect only 20 cents on the dollar in recovery.”

    Subprime securities generally haven’t risen in value in the past two months amid a rally among other types of home-loan bonds without government backing. A price rise for Alt-A and prime-jumbo mortgage securities, reflecting refinancing as mortgage rates plunge, is “overdone,” he said. Refinancing has boosted the value of those securities by returning some of the principal of bonds trading below face value at a faster pace.

    Typical prices for originally AAA rated prime-jumbo securities climbed to about 82 cents on the dollar on May 7, from about 66 cents March 5, according to Barclays Capital reports. Similar subprime securities from the second half of 2006 fell to about 34 cents, from about 35 cents, based on a credit-default swap index, according to the bank’s reports.

    In March, so-called severities, or the amount lost after foreclosures relative to loan sizes, ranged between 70.8 percent and 73.3 percent on average for mortgages underlying the four different ABX index series, according to the bank.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=akQOT0_87RXc&refer=home

    Green shoots...
     
  2. Brussels sprouts :cool: