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SVB collapse could mean a $500B venture capital ‘haircut’

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121–130 of 181 posts

Re: SVB collapse could mean a $500B venture capital ‘haircut’

#121

Good. All those 0% interest leveraged VC funds can go burn in a fire. They pumped stupid money into companies and inflated valuations. Now that things are getting saner with real interest rates above 0 and getting higher sanity will reign again in the markets.

It's delusional to think that this won't have effects on most HNers employment/salary. So be careful what you wish for

Honestly, on a national scale (never mind international) we're the lucky ones. A slowdown that mainly hits us is better than a crash that hits everyone.

Re: SVB collapse could mean a $500B venture capital ‘haircut’

#122
post #101
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a hard line between insolvency and illiquidity. Illiquidity can be solved by borrowing at the federal funds rate.

I kinda agree here, it's a cash flow question. But that doesn't resolve what the haircut (if any) should be put on the securities in question nor what their future value will be. The BTFP does it for one year without a haircut. Is it long enough? Depends on where long term rates go. If they fall a couple of points in the next year, it could, but if the Fed fails to beat inflation and they rise... then it wouldn't.

The other problem with BTFP is that it makes less HQLA collateral available in the swaps market for securities with similar tenors to those locked in BTFP. In one hand you increase liquidity for the most liquid assets on bank books, and on the other hand you decrease liquidity for least liquid assets on bank books (and private holders of said securities, private $ denom debt > us gov debt).

Re: SVB collapse could mean a $500B venture capital ‘haircut’

#123

The whole idea of venture capital comes from the broken taxation model. The people who actually produce things, you know doing the work and have knowledge how to do something are burdened with heavy taxation, because years ago, when companies had high headcount, it was a way to make companies pay taxes. Now that everything gets offshored, including work, that model doesn't work anymore, but politicians for known reas…

"so to plug the tax gap, they increase taxes on labour"

Agree here. If you ever want to ruin a fancy dinner party say this: "We should tax capital gains at the highest rates, and tax labour the lowest."

Re: SVB collapse could mean a $500B venture capital ‘haircut’

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can blame the Fed for low interest rates, but it's the yield curve inversion and long rates which caused the liquidity/solvency problem not the short term rate hikes I blame the bank management. They left the risk management position open and spent way too much time, money and effort on marketing during that period of time rather than shoring up their shaky position.

And even then, this article is about the venture capital industry and private equity firms - which for the most part is entirely different than banks. The problem is apparently that some VCs invested in banks - and banks are about to be more heavily regulated. That's a good thing -- it will get banks implementing the backstops they should've had all along. I really don't mind if some VCs make less money than they'd h…

Actually, I think what they're talking about is that VCs have a lot of investments they would not dump more money into. They use these investments as collateral for loans, based on some kind of valuation (which, given the lack of price discovery is arbitrary). Essentially, they're zero value investments. If these investments were repriced, the actual value of the VC fund would fall.

As the interviewee indicates, if the uninsured depositors had not been bailed out, the VC firms would have had to decide to put more of their "dry powder" (on a temporary basis) into these startups until their deposit claims were adjudicated. the VCs would not have done that, even if they knew they'd get all of it back when the dissolution was complete. That means that the 10 million investment in a 1 billion dollar unicorn currently on their books would suddenly be worthless.

Instead, they're going to continue to carry it at $10 million because there's no price discovery on these highly illiquid assets. Essentially, the last price discovery was when they made the investment which caused the value to be set.

Re: SVB collapse could mean a $500B venture capital ‘haircut’

#125
post #83
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen a lot of evidence yet that SVB was necessarily pursuing a risky strategy. Certainly, proceeding at all without a risk manager is risky in and of itself. However, the "risky" investments that I have heard described thus far are mostly treasury securities. They simply had too many for a time horizon too far out. There is no bank right now that could withstand a withdrawal rate of nearly 50% of total asse…

> However, the "risky" investments that I have heard described thus far are mostly treasury securities You assume that all risk is default risk. The risk that SVB took wasn't that the US govt will default on its bonds. It was that the treasuries will lose their value in case of interest rate changes. SVB bought billions of dollars of US treasuries which lost their value in the last year due to rate hikes. This showed…

No, I understand the liquidity risk involved in having too much tied up in long term treasuries. But I am yet to see evidence that any bank could have withstood a run of that magnitude. Nor have I seen much evidence that most other banks have significantly less liquidity risk than svb did.

Re: SVB collapse could mean a $500B venture capital ‘haircut’

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nor the moral hazard created by the bailout There was no moral hazard created because bank shareholder equity got zeroed out. Bank management and shareholders were not protected against the 'find out' phase.

There is absolutely moral hazard for depositors. If uninsured SVB depositors had gotten something like 90¢ on the dollar for deposits, every company with uninsured deposits would start thinking about how reliable their bank might be. More due diligence would happen. Of course, we also would have seen runs on many more regional banks. The "too big to fail" banks like JP Morgan and BofA would only have gotten much larg…

It shouldn't be up to depositors to do "due diligence" on their bank, making sure they're compliant is exactly the kind of thing government is _for_.

Imagine if you had to do several hours of research on every single thing you purchased and investment you made, you'd never have time for anything else and there's still a chance you miss something.

Compare that to experts doing it and spending a lot more time on it, then slapping anyone who is not up to standard. It's a way more efficient system.

Re: SVB collapse could mean a $500B venture capital ‘haircut’

#127
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the corona payments ended. Computer chips and PCs are largely back in stock. Fertilizer and fuel prices went higher in past year. This drove up food production prices. Molecule flow in pipeline to Germany was sabotaged, preventing sale of molecules from east to west which drove up natural gas prices at export ports in USA. Not a virus issue but a war issue.

> Computer chips and PCs are largely back in stock. Not sure if car manufacturers, the Raspberry Pi foundation, and many others would agree with that assessment. Energy prices in Europe have started coming down again as well. And Corona payments may have ended, but the money is still sloshing around in the system.

Right, the specialized chips are still catching up. And Dell forecasts a 20% revenue drop this quarter.

https://www.electropages.com/blog/2023/02/semiconductor-over...

I had read that rpi started selling bulk to companies which is leaving little supply for consumers. Maybe upstarts like Orange Pi will step in to fill the void for consumers.

http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontro...

>> payments may have ended, but the money is still sloshing around in the system.

How would existing money cause additional inflation? It would flat-line, not increase.

Re: SVB collapse could mean a $500B venture capital ‘haircut’

#128
post #46

“There are enough zombie companies with frothy valuations that need restructuring, price discovery and of course re-tooling of their business models to a world of tighter credit, subdued revenue and higher rates,” SVB has nothing to do with that problem. It's about higher interest rates. The end of free money for stupid stuff. Now companies have to make money. So who's going down? TSLA, UBER, and RBLX already made it…

Scale AI and Cruise?

Cruise is owned by GM

Re: SVB collapse could mean a $500B venture capital ‘haircut’

#129
post #46

“There are enough zombie companies with frothy valuations that need restructuring, price discovery and of course re-tooling of their business models to a world of tighter credit, subdued revenue and higher rates,” SVB has nothing to do with that problem. It's about higher interest rates. The end of free money for stupid stuff. Now companies have to make money. So who's going down? TSLA, UBER, and RBLX already made it…

TSLA is a stupid money loser?

Re: SVB collapse could mean a $500B venture capital ‘haircut’

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which it didn't have to use but which the sophisticated but not-that-sophisticated investors, say venture capitalists, would assume is the reality It seems like you're implying that a truly sophisticated investor would view this differently, but I don't see how. By all indications, the MTM price was economically correct--bid/ask spreads and trading volumes were normal, and the price was very close to what a simple…

I suppose I shouldn't necessarily imply "truly sophisticated" but one group of depositors would just say "of course the Fed will support the depositors, there's no reason to worry" your argument about insolvency is correct.

That's fair--to the extent truly sophisticated depositors believed "there's no need for a bank run, since the FDIC would take extraordinary measures to back the uninsured deposits even if the SVB collapses while economically insolvent", they were exactly right. The cost of moving money out is so small that you'd have to believe that very strongly not to though, or to get a big auxiliary benefit (access to future credit, etc.) from the continued existence of the SVB.
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