Live data from Hacker News

Why Index Funds Are Like Subprime CDOs

bloomberg.com

301–310 of 324 posts

Re: Why Index Funds Are Like Subprime CDOs

#301
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see the problem here. Any reasonably competent quant can calculate a liquidity premium and factor it into their ETF arbitrage strategy. ETFs that trade illiquid assets should simply trade at a discount relative to their "last traded price" NAV commensurate with the liquidity risk they're assuming.

> Any reasonably competent quant can calculate a liquidity premium and factor it into their ETF arbitrage strategy Liquidity premium isn't relevant here. The concept of the liquidity premium explains the differences in prices of otherwise identical securities as a function of their liquidity. What you're thinking of is called slippage , the difference between your target price and realized price for a trade. When run…

> Liquidity premium isn't relevant here. The concept of the liquidity premium explains the differences in prices of otherwise identical securities as a function of their liquidity. What you're thinking of is called slippage, the difference between your target price and realized price for a trade.

Those are the same thing. An illiquid asset cannot be liquidated without slippage - that's why there's a liquidity premium.

> When running an ETF arbitrage strategy, your concern is not explaining the price of the relevant securities. However, you do care whether you can enter and exit positions profitably. Slippage models are highly nontrivial.

Again...slippage is the thing caused by a lack of liquidity.

Re: Why Index Funds Are Like Subprime CDOs

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If customers ask for 1% of index funds to be sold, index funds have to sell 1% of their holdings in the exact ratios defined by the index I'd like to point out that while this may be the case for traditional mutual funds, it is not for ETFs. ETFs don't redeem shares for cash they redeem them for equities in the underlying index. So ETFs don't actually buy or sell any securities unless they rebalance.

That depends on: A) the standard lock-up period of a fund, or B) an ETF under strong selling pressure can be halted by the exchange. Some contracts presumably allow an ETF manager to halt sales if high outflows and low liquidity? Certainly can occur with funds.

And C) "There are some escape clauses in Vanguard's index funds: The fund may temporarily depart from its normal investment policies and strategies when doing so is believed to be in the fund’s best interest. ... Vanguard funds can postpone payment of redemption proceeds for up to seven calendar days." as per MathNerd314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20888999

Re: Why Index Funds Are Like Subprime CDOs

#303
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any reasonably competent quant can calculate a liquidity premium and factor it into their ETF arbitrage strategy Liquidity premium isn't relevant here. The concept of the liquidity premium explains the differences in prices of otherwise identical securities as a function of their liquidity. What you're thinking of is called slippage , the difference between your target price and realized price for a trade. When run…

> Liquidity premium isn't relevant here. The concept of the liquidity premium explains the differences in prices of otherwise identical securities as a function of their liquidity. What you're thinking of is called slippage, the difference between your target price and realized price for a trade. Those are the same thing. An illiquid asset cannot be liquidated without slippage - that's why there's a liquidity premium…

> An illiquid asset cannot be liquidated without slippage - that's why there's a liquidity premium.

We agree here.

> Those are the same thing.

We disagree here.

"In economics, a liquidity premium is the explanation for a difference between two types of financial securities (e.g. stocks), that have all the same qualities except liquidity." [0]

"With regard to futures contracts as well as other financial instruments, slippage is the difference between where the computer signaled the entry and exit for a trade and where actual clients, with actual money, entered and exited the market using the computer’s signals."

The concepts are related, but not identical.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidity_premium

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippage_%28finance%29

Re: Why Index Funds Are Like Subprime CDOs

#304
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Liquidity premium isn't relevant here. The concept of the liquidity premium explains the differences in prices of otherwise identical securities as a function of their liquidity. What you're thinking of is called slippage, the difference between your target price and realized price for a trade. Those are the same thing. An illiquid asset cannot be liquidated without slippage - that's why there's a liquidity premium…

> An illiquid asset cannot be liquidated without slippage - that's why there's a liquidity premium. We agree here. > Those are the same thing. We disagree here. "In economics, a liquidity premium is the explanation for a difference between two types of financial securities (e.g. stocks), that have all the same qualities except liquidity." [0] "With regard to futures contracts as well as other financial instruments, s…

Yes, but they are functionally identical in this context. The liquidity premium exists because of slippage.

Re: Why Index Funds Are Like Subprime CDOs

#305
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the price set by everyone, not just the active traders? It's set each time a sale happens, but the price itself is also related to how many people are holding the stock long term. I don't really consider it possible for pricing to be "accurate". It is what it is, but accurate implies there's a correct valuation, which I don't think there is.

For financial products, there is a correct price but it cannot be known for certain until far in the future. Stocks in particular represent a claim on the future dividends of the company, whether issued during operation or at the dissolution of the company. If both those future dividends and future inflation were known, you could accurately calculate the present value of that cash flow and get the correct price.

I'm over my toes here, being a programmer and not a finance person, but isn't this viewpoint controversial? IE, does everyone (relatively well informed) agree there are correct prices?

Re: Why Index Funds Are Like Subprime CDOs

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of 401k providers have been pushing passive Index funds as "stable" late-life investments with higher return rates than actually stable securities such as bonds. So maybe there is a fear to find there that there is a lot more short term thinking and short-term investors in Index funds than there "should be" (and that market adjustment there could be disastrous to a lot of retirees).

I guess I'm not old enough to have thought through this already, but it was explained to me early on in my career that 401k plans should be divested slowly as one approaches the end of their career. Is this atypical compared to how it actually works in reality?

That's still almost the usual good advice: as much as possible with one's personal 401k you want to manage it as close to a classic pension as possible. Your best case will always be that you build it up enough over your working career that you only withdraw "passive income" (dividends/interest) from it as your "retirement salary" (and leave the bulk of it to continue generating passive income). Generally early in your career you can afford higher risk/higher reward investments, and as you transition through your career towards your inevitable retirement you rebalance from high risk investments (stocks) to lower risk securities with stable passive income (bonds).

Most "age-based" or "target-date" Active Funds that 401k providers sell are built precisely around managing this gradual multi-decade progression from mixtures high in stocks to those higher in bonds.

(You probably don't want to divest from the account before you retire because you'll pay heavy taxes on it. You simply want to manage the asset mix inside it. You generally want to avoid divesting as much as possible [and want to try to keep it as slow as possible] after you retire simply because passive income is more sustainable than asset liquidation in the long term.)

The reality though is that 401ks are individual accounts for better and (mostly, much) worse. Even when people follow the best advice, they rarely hit the right passive income numbers for a living wage. 401ks also wind up with more people gambling with such savings without thinking about the long term. Then there's simply the fact in the horribly messy transition between group pensions and individual 401ks that there are a lot of "short timer" 401k accounts out there among "Baby Boomers" and "GenX", that people will just cash out when the right retirement age happens to avoid tax penalties, or when the need is greatest (or anything in between), because there's no chance they'll ever make enough passive income and the account itself at that points for most purposes is merely a tax shelf.

Reality is full of a lot a 401k accounts that are managed only so well as the account owner and maybe the interests of the bank involved in holding the account. Which is also why the world is full of a lot of bad 401k advice and advice managers, because we've distributed that cognitive load across almost the entire populace. (As opposed to classic group pensions that could afford full time managers with CPA degrees.)

A lot of the possible "mismanagement" advice lately is a Boomers in particular were sent a lot of advertising / clickbait / thoughtpieces on how much Index ETFs are generally better than Active Funds for the simple reason of Fees. An Active Fund, especially one such as the age-based or target-date funds, charges higher fees than a passive fund like an Index ETF. In the same magic that creates passive income, compound interest, whatever you save on fees multiplies greatly over time. Unfortunately for the Boomers, while this is potentially great early career advice [1] when the age-based/target-date active funds are most active (higher stock mixes), passive funds are still a higher risk late career than the usual bonds and similar securities such funds push to late career.

(Which returns to the topic of the article at hand, this is why Burry, as at least one investor, is worried about this over-sale of Index ETFs. Index funds in the last few years have generally done better than both traditional securities [not really a surprise] and active funds [possibly a surprise; Burry describes it as an unstable bubble, but may be hyperbolic], so there's been a lot of short term investors in that game. There probably are enough Boomer 401ks alone that are in "short time" mode ticking time bombs full of Index ETFs that should they all start coming due and trying to liquidate/divest, we might see if passive Index ETFs can handle the trade volume the hard way, which is what Burry is worried about.)

[1] Depending on your investment management time, of course. The majority of people with 401ks already have at least one full time job and likely don't have time to also become their own personal pension fund manager.

Re: Why Index Funds Are Like Subprime CDOs

#307
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For financial products, there is a correct price but it cannot be known for certain until far in the future. Stocks in particular represent a claim on the future dividends of the company, whether issued during operation or at the dissolution of the company. If both those future dividends and future inflation were known, you could accurately calculate the present value of that cash flow and get the correct price.

I'm over my toes here, being a programmer and not a finance person, but isn't this viewpoint controversial? IE, does everyone (relatively well informed) agree there are correct prices?

Somewhat.

There is arguably an objectivly true answer for exactly what payments a given stock will make, and so there is an objectivly true answer for what the present value of the stock is (also dependent on other aspects of the future market). This is somewhat of a philosiphical question, largly boiling down to determinism; and is largly moot because no one claims to be able to predict the future well enough for this to work.

Instead, the working position that most take (at least implicitly) is that there is an objectivly correct probability curve of what the future payouts will be, and therefore an objectivly correct probability curve of present values. How to determine what this curve is is a matter of great debate. Further, there is a sufficient lack of objective methodology, that many of the factors that people use in this calculation would be refered to as "opinion", but there is still an objective reality out there.

However, this only gets us an (unknowable) objective probability curve of present values. In general, there is no objective way to turn this into a price. That is to say it is a matter of opinion how much a 50% chance of making $100 is [0].

In an ideal market, you would be able to sell a stock for its objective value at any time. However, "the market can stay irrational longer then you can stay solvent", so you may pay a premium for stocks that you expect to not be undervalued when want to sell them.

Conversly, you may by a stock not because you think it is worth what you are paying, but instead because you expect to find a greater fool to pay you even more then you paid.

There are also cases where people value stocks not just because of their future payments, but because they actually care about the company (or, in the case of divestment, people dont buy them becausr of personal preferences).

In short, there is some matters of opinion in determining a correct price; but most of the disagreement comes from a factual disagreement about what the future looks like.

[0] this calculus changes when you have many such gambles with varying degrees of corralation (and many a financial problem have stemmed from underestimating this corralation)

Re: Why Index Funds Are Like Subprime CDOs

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine there was a cookie market made up of two types of cookies, tasty and meh. An active investor in cookies would spend time determining which cookies are likely tasty and which are meh. They would pay more for the tastier cookies so they can savor the flavor and less for the meh ones they can binge eat in the shower when no one is home.... A passive investor comes along and says, I don't want to do all this rese…

> At some point, no one is left to figure out which cookies are tasty vs meh Except that there’s a lot of money to be made by figuring out which cookies are winners, and buying them cheaply to sell to the passive investors.

In theory. In practice the people who can control market pricing can force out even passive investors because passive investors still get valuation reports albeit on a less timely basis. Burry almost lost his shirt shorting sub-prime credit, as Morganchase and Goldmans mispriced his derivatives more and more egregiously as the market moved in Burry’s favor in a bid to get his investors to force him out of his/their positions using ignorant fear. Passive investors are generally not market savvy, that’s why they are passive.

Re: Why Index Funds Are Like Subprime CDOs

#309
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At some point, no one is left to figure out which cookies are tasty vs meh Except that there’s a lot of money to be made by figuring out which cookies are winners, and buying them cheaply to sell to the passive investors.

A merit of the passive approach is that the act of buying tasty cookies will increase the tasty-cookie price. The passive investors' existing tasty-cookie holdings will increase in value, too. All the passive investors want is for their cookies (and new-cookie acquisitions) to be properly priced. No matter what, they have an average distribution of cookie-quality in their holdings. The passive investors are not buyin…

This is confused

> All the passive investors want is for their cookies (and new-cookie acquisitions) to be properly priced.

No, they want the cookies they purchase to be under-priced, and consumed once their price has gone up. The cookie analogy fails here, but passive investors are exclusively seeking return, not an efficient market.

> No matter what, they have an average distribution of cookie-quality in their holdings.

That's not how passive investing works. The classic model is investment in an index -- say the FTSE 100 -- which attempts instead to maximize the quality of holdings, not the most accurately priced.

> It is hard to bilk a passive investor

Yes, but that doesn't mean it's hard to make money off one.

Post reply on HN