Mind Over Market

By Robert Stowe England June 14, 2010 Subprime loan performance of mortgages held in private label residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) has finally improved for the first time after rising steadily for nearly four years. Delinquencies in RMBS vintages from 2005 to 2008, which peaked at 54.4 percent in January 2010, began to decline over the last three months and fell to 51.5 percent as of April 2010, according to Moody's Investors Service. "Subprime mortgage loan performance appears to have turned a corner over the past several months," writes Peter McNally, vice president and senior analyst at Moody's in the credit rating agency's Weekly Credit Outlook for June 14. McNally notes that other classes of RMBS, jumbo prime and Alt-A and home equity, have also shown improvement, "though somewhat less pronounced." McNally is crediting the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) as "one contributor" to the improved loan performance for s...

A year ago, a paper written by a student at Harvard College -- Anna Katherine Barnett-Hart -- received a fair amount of media attention. The paper examines the collateral performance and credit rating of asset-backed security collateralized debt obligations, so-called ABS CDOs. The author's findings are not surprising, in light of what is already known about the mortgage meltdown, but they do provide a better delineation of the parameters of the CDO meltdown. Given the intense interest in CDO deals following the Securities and Exchange Commission's charges of civil fraud against Goldman Sachs for a deal known as Abacus 2007 AC1, it is worth revisiting the findings in this research and analysis by a college senior seeking to graduate with honors. The author looks at both broad data on CDO performance and the ratings of credit rating agencies, but she also closely examines 735 ABS CDO deals. The author's main finding is that there was far too much in the way of low qual...