A rare analytical look at the financial crisis using simple analysis The economic crisis that began in 2008 revealed the numerous problems in our financial system, from the way mortgage loans were produced to the way Wall Street banks leveraged themselves. Curiously enough, however, most of the reasons for the banking collapse are very similar to the reasons that Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), the largest hedge fund to date, collapsed in 1998. The Crisis of Crowding looks at LTCM in greater detail, with new information, for a more accurate perspective, examining how the subsequent hedge funds started by Meriwether and former partners were destroyed again by the lapse of judgement in allowing Lehman Brothers to fail. Covering the lessons that were ignored during LTCM's collapse but eventually connected to the financial crisis of 2008, the book presents a series of lessons for hedge funds and financial markets, including touching upon the circle of greed from homeowners to real estate agents to politicians to Wall Street. Guides the reader through the real story of Long-Term Capital Management with accurate descriptions, previously unpublished data, and interviews Describes the lessons that hedge funds, as well as the market, should have learned from LTCM's collapse Explores how the financial crisis and LTCM are a global phenomena rooted in failures to account for risk in crowded spaces with leverage Explains why quantitative finance is essential for every financial institution from risk management to valuation modeling to algorithmic trading Is filled with simple quantitative analysis about the financial crisis, from the Quant Crisis of 2007 to the failure of Lehman Brothers to the Flash Crash of 2010 A unique blend of storytelling and sound quantitative analysis, The Crisis of Crowding is one of the first books to offer an analytical look at the financial crisis rather than just an account of what happened. Also included are a layman's guide to the Dodd-Frank rules and what it means for the future, as well as an evaluation of the Fed's reaction to the crisis, QE1, QE2, and QE3.
Foreword xv Preface xix Cast of Characters xxiii CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1 PART I: THE 1998 LTCM CRISIS 5 CHAPTER 2 Meriwether's MagicMoney Tree 7 The Birth of Bond Arbitrage 7 The Dream Team 11 Early Success 14 CHAPTER 3 Risk Management 21 The General Idea 21 Leverage 22 Measuring Risk 23 The rho 24 Economics 24 Copycats, Puppies, and Counterparties 25 LTCM's Actual Risk Management Practices 27 Diversification 27 Operations 28 The Raw Evidence 29 CHAPTER 4 The Trades 37 The Short U.S. Swap Trade 41 The European Cross-Country Swap Trade (Short UK and Long Europe) 44 Long U.S. Mortgage Securities Hedged 46 The Box Spread in Japan 48 The Italian Swap Spread 50 Fixed-Income Volatility Trades 52 The On-the-Run and Off-the-Run Trade 54 Short Longer-Term Equity Index Volatility 57 Risk Arbitrage Trades 60 Equity Relative-Value Trades 63 Emerging Market Trades 65 Other Trades 67 The Portfolio of Trades 68 CHAPTER 5 The Collapse 71 Early Summer 1998 71 The Salomon Shutdown 73 The Russian Default 75 The Phone Calls 77 The Meriwether Letter 79 Buffett's Hostile Alaskan Offer 81 The Consortium Bailout 82 Too Big To Fail 84 Why Did It Happen? 85 Appendix 5.1 The John Meriwether Letter 89 Appendix 5.2 The Warren Buffett Letter 93 CHAPTER 6 The Fate of LTCM Investors 95 CHAPTER 7 General Lessons from the Collapse 101 Interconnected Crowds 101 VaR 102 Leverage 105 Clearinghouses 108 Compensation 110 What's Size Got to Do with It? 110 Contingency Capital 113 The Fed Is a Coordinator of Last Resort 114 Counterparty Due Diligence 115 Spread the Love 115 Quantitative Theory Did Not Cause the LTCM Collapse 116 D'ej'a Vu 118 PART II: THE FINANCIAL CRISIS OF 2008 121 CHAPTER 8 The Quant Crisis 123 The Subprime Mortgage Market Collapse 127 What Was the Quant Crisis? 129 The Erratic Behavior of Quant Factors 130 Standard Factors 130 Quantitative Portfolio Factors 133 Causes of the Quant Crisis 134 The Shed Show 137 CHAPTER 9 The Bear Stearns Collapse 141 A Brief History of the Bear 141 Shadow Banking 143 Window Dressing 144 Repo Power 145 The Unexpected Hibernation 148 The Polar Spring 150 CHAPTER 10 Money for Nothing and Fannie and Freddie for Free 155 The Basic Business 157 Where's the Risk? 158 CDO and CDO2 159 The Gigantic Hedge Fund 162 Big-Time Profits 165 The U.S. Housing Bubble 168 The Circle of Greed 170 Real Estate Agents and Mortgage Lender Tricks 173 Home Owners 177 Profits and Politicians 177 The Media and Regulators 180 Grade Inflation 182 Commercial Banks 185 Freddie and Fannie's Foreclosure 186 Why Save Freddie and Fannie? 187 Did Anyone Know? 188 CHAPTER 11 The Lehman Bankruptcy 191 The Wall Street Club 191 Why Was Lehman Next? 193 Business Exposure 196 A Chronology of the Gorilla's Death 202 Double Down in Real Estate 203 Mildly Seeking Capital 207 The Final Days 213 A Classic Run on the Bank 217 Why Let Lehman Fail? 219 Who Was at Fault? 222 Lehman Brothers 222 The Counterparties 224 The Government and Market Structure 225 The Legal Opinion on the Lehman Bankruptcy 225 Who Would Have Been Next? 226 The Spoils of Having Friends in High Places 227 CHAPTER 12 The Absurdity of Imbalance 233 The Long-Dated Swap Imbalance 236 The Repo Imbalance 241 The 228 Wasted Resources and the Global Run on Banks 243 CHAPTER 13 Asleep in Basel 245 Basel I 246 The Concept 246 The Problems 247 Basel II 248 The Concept 248 The Problems 249 Basel and the Financial Crisis 250 CHAPTER 14 The LTCM Spinoffs 253 JWM Partners LLC 253 Platinum Grove Asset Management 258 The Others 259 The Copycat Funds 262 CHAPTER 15 The End of LTCM's Legacy 265 The Bear and the Gorilla Attack 265 November Rain 271 What Went Wrong? 274 Market Insanity 275 Bigger Shocks 281 Market Imbalance 282 Deleveraging 285 Coup de Grace 286 CHAPTER 16 New and Old Lessons from the Financial Crisis 289 Interconnectedness and Crowds 289 Leverage 29
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