Hedge funds, CDOs and the financial crisis: An empirical investigation of the “Magnetar trade”

Thomas Mählmann

Journal of Banking & Finance, 2013, vol. 37, issue 2, 537-548

Abstract: The so called Magnetar trade (a kind of capital structure arbitrage on the US housing market, using CDS and synthetic CDOs, and exploiting rating-dependent mispricing of risk) has gained a high publicity due to a Pulitzer Prize awarded media story from two journalists of ProPublica (an online news outlet). The story essentially claimed that the mortgage investment strategy of the hedge fund Magnetar during the period between 2006 and mid 2007 was based on a desire to construct CDO deals with riskier assets so that they could place bets that portions of their own deals would fail. This paper provides several pieces of evidence in line with the argument that tranches from Magnetar-sponsored CDOs present overly risky investments. However, investors and rating agencies appear to have adjusted their required spread levels and ratings to reflect this higher riskiness, at least to some extent.

Keywords: Arbitrage; Collateralized debt obligation; Credit default swap; Hedge funds (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 G28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426612002932
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:37:y:2013:i:2:p:537-548

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2012.09.017

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Banking & Finance is currently edited by Ike Mathur

More articles in Journal of Banking & Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().