Autocallables Part IV: Issuers' Day-1 Value Mischief
(Mar 2024)
By Craig McCann and
Mike Yan
Earlier this week we posted about the $122 billion in autocallable structured products sold in the past 4 years, mostly issued by UBS, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. You can read that post here.
We illustrated features of autocallables with reference to the five notes linked to the stock price of Lucid issued by Credit Suisse and Citigroup in a post available here and pointed out a particularly poorly timed issuance by Citigroup linked...
Autocallables 2024 Part III: SVB, Really?
(Mar 2024)
By Craig McCann and
Mike Yan
On Monday, we documented that $122 billion in autocallable structured products have been sold in the past 4 years, mostly issued by UBS, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. You can read our first note on autocallables here.
Yesterday, we illustrated features of autocallables with reference to the five notes linked to the stock price of Lucid issued by Credit Suisse and Citigroup. You can read our second note here.
Today, we point...
Autocallables 2024 Part II: Lucid-linked Notes
(Mar 2024)
By Craig McCann and
Mike Yan
Yesterday, we described the rapid growth in Autocallable structured products; $122 billion have been sold in the past 4 years. You can read our first post on autocallables here.
In this, our second, post, we illustrate features of autocallables with reference to the five notes linked to the stock price of Lucid.
Our third post, available here, highlights a Silicon Valley Bank linked autocallable sold by Citigroup after the close on March 9, 2023 right...
Autocallables 2024 Part I
(Mar 2024)
By Craig McCann and
Mike Yan
Introduction
We have published extensively on structured products over the past 20 years. We published two papers dealing specifically with autocallable structured products - one in 2011 and one in 2015.[1] Since 2015, while we were focused on other research projects, the issuance of autocallable structured products has exploded, issuers have become more creative, the variety of products has proliferated and the potential for investor harm has increased...
Blackstone is Watching Us and Just Admitted a Major Misrepresentation
(May 2023)
By Craig McCann and
Regina Meng
You can download a pdf of this article to print or email here.
BREIT this week eliminated a prominent marketing graphic touting inflated after-tax yields and tax-equivalent yields after we pointed out that it was false and misleading.
In December 2022 we predicted a run on BREIT and then in April 2023 we identified 7 major areas in which we believe Blackstone and BREIT have been misleading investors.
Blackstone's Choice: Let BREIT Crash or...
Blackstone Fiddles as BREIT Burns
(Apr 2023)
By Craig McCann and Regina Meng.
You can download a pdf of this article to print or email here.
Introduction
In December, we argued that Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust ("BREIT") smoothed and inflated its reported returns for years, leading to large investor inflows. [1] We predicted that a run on the bank had started because of Blackstone's prior conduct, leaving it with two very bad options. BREIT could honor redemption requests at posted NAVs and see its NAV cut in half as the NAV...
SLCG Research: Structured Product Indexes
(Nov 2013)
Most research on structured products focuses on what is known as initial date mispricing -- the difference between what a product costs and how much it is worth, as of the issue date. If you look at any of our structured product reports (let's take this reverse convertible, for example), you can see that the product was issued at a price of $1,000, but that the present value of its resulting cashflows only comes out to $960.40. The difference, $39.60 or 3.96%, represents an expected loss to...
SLCG Research: Priority Senior Secured Income Fund
(Oct 2013)
In our experience, retail investors are being sold increasingly obscure and non-conventional investments. An investment that raised our eyebrows recently is the Priority Senior Secured Income (PSSI) Fund. The PSSI Fund is the first regulated investment company that invests primarily in leveraged loans and collateralized loan obligation (CLO) tranches lower in their capital structures.
Unlike the mutual funds with which most retail investors are familiar, PSSI Fund investors are not able to...
