SEC Charges Victorville, CA and Airport Authority with Securities Fraud
(May 2013)
Earlier this week, the SEC charged the City of Victorville, California and several other entities with municipal bond fraud. The charges relate to a $13.3 million 2008 bond offering by the Southern California Logistics Airport (SCLA) Authority, which was intended to refinance an "ill-conceived" redevelopment project for airplane hangers at the former George Air Force Base, which closed in 1992.
Municipal bonds are sometimes considered among the safest investments available. Municipal bond...
Valuations of Non-Traded REITs
(May 2013)
Earlier this week, the Investment Program Association (IPA) presented their guidelines for the valuation of publicly registered non-listed REITs. According to the IPA, these guidelines are supposed to "enhance the independence of the valuation process" and "enhance the quality of valuation disclosures to the investing public." For a discussion of the guidelines, see Brian Louis's recent story on Bloomberg.com.
Non-traded REITs -- real estate investment trusts that are registered with the SEC...
Resurgence of Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities and Decreased Underwriting Standards
(Apr 2013)
Late last week, Reuters reported that the issuance of so-called 'large-loan' Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities (CMBS) has recently spiked and that the increase in volume may be due in part to more lenient underwriting standards. Large-loan CMBS issuance in the first few months of 2013 has already surpassed that of 2012.
CMBSs are created by securitizing a pool of commercial mortgage loans such that an investment in a CMBS is a claim on the future cashflows from the pool of commercial...
Equal Weighting versus Market Capitalization Weighting
(Apr 2013)
We often hear about different stock market indexes in the same breath: on the evening news, you might hear that 'the Dow was up half a percent, the S&P gained three quarters of a percent, the NASDAQ was down a tenth of one percent'. While it may seem that these indexes tend to move together on most days, there are important differences between equity indexes. The one we hear about the most is that they are composed of different stocks: the Dow Jones Industrial Average tracks only 30...
SEC Litigation Releases: Week in Review - April 26th, 2013
(Apr 2013)
SEC Announces Settlements with Cache Decker and David Decker in SEC V. Zufelt
April 23, 2013, (Litigation Release No. 22684)
A final judgment was entered against Cache D. Decker and David M. Decker, Jr. for their allegedinvolvementin "Ponzi schemes operated by Anthony C. Zufelt" through his company Zufelt, Inc. and Silver Leaf Investments, Inc. The final judgment orders the defendants to pay over $257,000 in disgorgement, pre-judgment interest, and penalties, as well as permanently enjoins...
529 College Savings Plans Underperform Similar Mutual Funds -- Morningstar
(Apr 2013)
On Monday, Morningstar Fund Research issued their 2013 529 College-Savings Plans Industry Survey, which reviews the performance of the 529 industry in 2012. Their study finds that "college savers are continuing to invest in 529 college-saving plans at an impressive clip, even though their performance has lagged that of similar funds in recent years."
529 Plans are typically run by states and are used by investors to save for future education expenses such as college tuition on a...
Do ETFs and Mutual Funds with Higher Fees Outperform?
(Apr 2013)
There was a great comment on our post about FINRA's Mutual Fund Expense Analyzer.
Is there a positive correlation between fees and gross returns? In other words, are investors who pay higher fees compensated by higher returns?
On the one hand, one might expect that in order to garner high fees, a fund would have to earn higher returns; but on the other, it may be the case that higher fees simply erode profits and yield lower total returns.
We looked at data provided by Bloomberg on all...
ISDA Announces Market Agreed Coupon Contract for OTC Interest Rate Swaps
(Apr 2013)
The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) just announced the publication of a standardized form for over-the-counter (OTC) interest rate swaps called the Market Agreed Coupon (MAC) contract. The contract attempts to standardize the offering of interest rate swaps in the OTC market by specifying available tenors (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20 and 30 years), coupon increments (25 basis points), effective dates (IMM dates) and currencies (USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CAD and AUD).
The MAC...
Are ETF Flows Costly to ETF Investors?
(Apr 2013)
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are often lauded for their ability to efficiently create or redeem shares in response to changes in demand for the fund (known as fund flows). However, new research suggests that some ETFs that hold international securities may face transactional frictions that prevent them from tracking their benchmarks as well as other ETFs.
When there is an imbalance between supply and demand for an ETF, authorized participants (APs) create or redeem shares of the ETF to...
