Quote from Pa(b)st Prime:
These statistics prompting news stories about 600 zillion in derivatives are misleading.
I'm sure a few of you trade Eurodollar futures every now and then. Each CME contract is worth $1,000,000. Much of the activity is spreads and the spreads are most often pretty stable. You need to trade size for the movements to matter. So a trader with 100 Dec-March ED spreads can brag to the girls in the bar that he has two hundred million dollars worth of "exposure" but in reality his ultimate risk is no more than one of us trading naked long or short 5 or 10 ES. The true exposure in OTC exotics isn't systematic market risk but counter party risk. We're quickly seeing counter party risk re-regulated. The threat going forward isn't going to come from the use of exotic derivatives per se' but just good old fashioned asset depreciation, over extended Government borrowings and God forbid a few VERY expensive natural disasters......
That's much needed perspective, right there.
The Lehman CDS settlement saw a net exposure of 2% outstanding notional.
Even though Lehman went bankrupt, and CDS insured debt traded for 91 cents on the dollar (meaning sellers had to shell out 91 cents for every debt contract insured - at a 10 to 1 basis), the market saw only a 8 Billion net loss - on 360 Billion PAYABLE.
However, should be noted those figures were for that session only.
Deritiive counterparties who sold all this shit now becoming due have been marketing-to-market their positions continously, and hedging losses continously.
The real question - how much did counter-parties lose, OVERALL - from Lehman CDS Sales, start to finish.
That would give a far more realistic guess as to market exposure on the hundreds of trillions floating out there.
Its like if some bank sold derivatives, and their position continuously went against them. What does the bank do? Hedges and buys offsetting derivatives at each incremental move against them from other sellers. The end effect is they loose, but not that much.
You want the truth? I got suckered into the whole derivative black-hole nightmare painted by media. Until I saw Lehman settlement and realized we'd been had.
There is no derivative blackhole. It all gets hedged and pared down to maybe 5-15% of their total theoretical exposure.
This is Bankers of America United terrorizing Mainstreet to socialize their losses and juice their accounts.
A nice little slice of FINANCIAL TERRORISM, right there.
Same with the day after the 1st bailout bill was voted down.
Plunge Protection Team decidedly absent from the guaranteed biggest Bleeder yet, and the Market tanked what? 10%??
Oh yea.
Wallstreet put the hurt on and we panicked.
And we're letting them.
Sheep to Slaughter.