05/09/2011 More on the "Bernanke Arbitrage" trade – fellow rich Americans helping fellow Americans own homes as a brilliant investment opportunity for themselves

In Southern California, all around us there are many wealthy people who own multi-million dollar homes along the coastal area from Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Beverly Hills, Manhattan Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach down to La Jolla in San Diego. Many of them do not even have a mortgage.

On average many decent homes in these exclusive coastal area are worth above two million dollars. Wouldn’t it be a good idea for some of them to have a cash out refinance to put their idle home equity to work. Say they could simply borrow only one million dollars (50%) from their two-million-dollar home and use that money to invest in a partial interest through a member interest in a FARJHO/LLC deal to help some other less fortunate fellow Californians to own homes? One million dollar cash could probably help finance three or four FARJHO deals in the Inland Empire area for example, where average decent homes could sell around $300,000.

This is by no means just a charity work for these rich property owners. They could potentially do very well and become much richer by doing good this way. At today’s posting, the level of a 15-year fixed rate mortgage is about 3.83%. In a FARJHO deal the current market rental rate comes up to be between 5% to 7% annually. The positive carry could range between 1% to 3% after cost.

Generically speaking, that means if a rich home owner with a $2 million home borrows a fixed rate mortgage of $1 million (50% LTV) and invests the cash as a JPI (joint property investor) to help 3 to 4 other AHOs (Aspiring Home Owners) to buy homes through the FARJHO structure, he/she could earn a minimum spread of between 1 to 3% on the one million dollars every year for the next 15 years while turning his $2 million home equity in his current property into a total equivalent of $3 million home equity for the next 15 years.

When home prices start to go up anytime within the next 15 years (say 5 or 7 years later), he/she could simply unwind the trade by selling the homes he/she invested in when agreed by the AHOs, selling only the FARJHO member interests to the AHOs or to any other third party investors in order to take profit. He/she can then use the proceeds (much higher than $1 million) to pay off the original $1 million loan (either amortized or a balloon). He/she could have the choice of using either an interest only loan or a fully amortized loan for this 15 year fixed rate mortgage, with some benefits trade-off of course.

There are also justifiable tax oriented incentives such as the home mortgage interest deduction for unlocking this primary residence home equity through a moderate leveraging for these rich people. As long as they stick to the 30- or 15-year fixed rate mortgages so that there would not be unnecessary interest rate risk in the future, it could be made a prudent investment for them. Here below are a few other advantages as compared to his/her other investment alternatives with the cash generated through refinancing.

1. The annual dividend yield from the rental income in a FARJHO deal could also go higher periodically (say at every 3 year intervals) within the next 15 or 30 years while the interest rate cost has already been fixed for the next 15 or 30 years. That may make the total returns outcome even better than projected.

2. The key to success of this trade is the current positive carry (rent income could be obtained higher than the mortgage interest cost currently). Very few other relatively safe financial assets could generate such a high yield in dollar terms at the moment.

3. Using the money to invest in speculative gold, silver or other commodities would generate no yield at all and their high prices could suddenly crash and have a free fall. In contrast, it is unlikely there would be a further “crash” in the US residential real estate market going forward. It may at most drift a bit lower before it would eventually rebound, given a no inflation scenario within the next few years. As long as there is a positive carry, the chance that the trade would lose money would be minimal. With high inflation, this Bernanke Arbitrage trade could really win big.

4. Comparing with using that money to invest in stocks. Few stocks would have such high secured dividends for such a long period with such a high appreciation potential at the same time. Stock investments could also potentially end up being zero due to fraud or mismanagement such as Enron, WorldCom, etc. It is unlikely that investors would lose their shirts entirely on real estate.

5. With a current average 6% annual minimum dividend yield from rental income and the unlimited upside growth potential in home equity through investing in a FARJHO transaction, why would any free market investors put their money into a residential mortgage which only generates 3.86% annually at the moment with no upside appreciation potential at all for the next 15 years? The answer really lies in the name. This trading strategy is hence called a “Bernanke Arbitrage” trade.

Don’t stay a victim of Fed’s QEs. Big banks on Wall Street should not be the only ones who have benefited and continue to benefit from these unwise economic policies for our country. If we can not stop them. Why not join the loot? Let’s make Quantitative Easings work for the American working class people and home owners on Main Street!

Filed under: Economic Viewpoints, FARJHO, InvestorsAlly, Arbitrage, Bernanke Arbitrage, Bernanke Arbitrage trade, Cash out refinance, FARJHO, Loose monetary policy, QE2, SwapRent

04/02/2011 Dispelling harmful myths about the need of a weaker currency

No other economic topic is more confusing and has been least properly understood by the public than the exchange rate system. Politicians love to use it for the opportunistic advantage it offers to blame foreigners for their fellow countrymen’s failure to economically compete. Academics love to use it to make a point for a half baked truth.

They may all have a point. The problem is that the points will all have only half of the truth. The politicians’ opponents and the academic’s rivals could all be right at the same time since there are always two sides to an exchange rate’s impact on the economy more like there are always two sides of a coin. More often than not it is completely futile to make an argument on what is better to have, a stronger exchange rate or a weaker exchange rate, for a specific short term purpose.

For short term purposes, when a country’s currency is stronger it is good for the assets and when it is weaker it is good for the country’s liabilities. A weaker exchange rate may help stimulate the domestic economy by creating more foreign demands for its commodities and goods but it will cause a permanent wholesale destruction of the country’s aggregate wealth in the global market place. A stronger currency may serve to slow down its domestic economic activities and hence lower inflationary pressure by reducing foreign demand but it may create permanent wholesale advantage and sudden increased wealth for every one of its citizens.

Over the long run, a country with a stronger currency commands confidence and respect of every human being on earth, could easily afford to develop more leading edge scientific discoveries and engineering monuments, let alone a much stronger military defence force. It also naturally speaks much louder in global politics, attracts top talents to migrate and work for it to further enhance its competitiveness. Therefore the strength of a country’s exchange rate is really a report card of its government’s performance, as fully discussed in my prior blog post on 10/15/2010, “Foreign exchange rate is the competency report card of a government’s ability to manage a country’s economy”.

So next time you read an op-ed commentary, hear a comment by a guest speaker on TV, or study an academic paper arguing for weaker currency, perhaps you would like to find out whether the person has a political agenda trying to spin a story to confuse the public or perhaps he/she is simply a complete moron.

Hoping to gain short term export advantage to create temporary transient job opportunities instead of focusing the collective efforts on increasing longer term productivity or economic competitiveness by promoting diligence, hard working ethics and/or innovations will simply continue the wholesale destruction of our country’s wealth and eventually reduce us from a major league super power to a little league weenie power.

Filed under: Currencies, Economic Viewpoints, Exchange rate mechanism, Loose monetary policy