Irresistible Mortgage-Backed Securities

Excerpt from an article in The New York Times
Sunday, February 19, 2012

Prices of Mortgage-Backed Securities Prove Irresistible

By AZAM AHMED

Some Wall Street investors made money as the mortgage market boomed; others profited when it fell apart.

Having reaped big gains during both of those turns, Greg Lippmann, a former star trader at Deutsche Bank, is now catching the next upswing: buying the same securities built from mortgages that he bet against before the financial crisis erupted.

Mr. Lippmann is joined by other big-money investors - mutual funds like Fidelity as well as hedge funds - in riding a wave of interest in the same complex loan pools that nearly washed away the financial system.

The attraction is the price. Some mortgage bonds are so cheap that even in the worst forecasts, with home prices falling as much as 10 percent and foreclosures rising, investors say they can still make money.

"Given its significant underperformance in 2011, we believe the product is as cheap to broader markets as it has been in a long time," Mr. Lippmann, whose portfolio is heavy with subprime mortgage securities, wrote in a recent letter to investors.

More broadly, the nascent recovery in the mortgage bond market supports a view that the housing slump may have bottomed out. Sales of existing homes are picking up. State and federal authorities have reached a $26 billion settlement with the big banks that is expected to provide some mortgage relief. And the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has been able to auction off billions of dollars of mortgage securities that it acquired as part of the financial crisis bailouts.

"There is light at the end of the tunnel," said Kenneth J. Taubes, the head of United States investment for Pioneer Investments, a global investment manager that owns these securities. "The mortgage crisis is getting behind us, and things are getting back to some semblance of normality."

That optimism is an about-face from 2006 and 2007, when Mr. Lippmann and others told investors that housing was a bubble ready to burst. On Wall Street, Mr. Lippmann became known as "Bubble Boy," and one of his traders wore a joking T-shirt that read, "I Shorted Your House."

His exploits were chronicled in Michael Lewis's best seller "The Big Short," which described him as somewhat brash and crass. He was known for maintaining a sushi spreadsheet, where he ranked the top Japanese restaurants in Manhattan on ambiance, quality and cost. (He still maintains the spreadsheet.)

These days, industry competitors describe Mr. Lippmann, who runs LibreMax Capital, as a more mellow presence. And he is much more positive about the market, telling investors that his fund is reducing its hedge against a potential market crash. Through a spokesman, Mr. Lippmann declined to comment.