Harley Bassman: “The Fed Is Trying To Land A Jumbo Jet On A Football Field”…(Won’t. End. Well…)
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
10/22/2014
Once upon a time, one of the best sell-side analysts in the MBS space was Merrill Lynch’s “Convexity Maven” Harley Bassman: he was so good, in fact, he was quickly soaked up to the buyside, or at least the prop-trading side, when several years ago he left Merrill to join Credit Suisse as a prop trader. It was here that he provided some insightful trade ideas such as “The “Anti-Widowmaker” Trade: Get Paid To Wait For The Japanese House Of Card To Collapse” and previewed the “Inevitable ‘Taper'” at a time when most still didn’t think the Fed was running out of paper to monetize. Then, about a year ago, Bassman disappeared again, only to reappear in a new capacity at recently-troubled bond manager Pimco. It is from here that following a year-long silences, he has just sent out his latest letter, in which he picks up on his favorite topic: implied volatility in rates, and the arbitrage opportunities it provides courtesy of epic risk mispricing in the current quote-unquote market, courtesy of the Fed’s 6 year+ centrally-planned manipulation of, well, everything.
The Rest…HERE
