Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Yield Curves and Carry Trades

I was thinking about the "We protect against all losses through hedging" guys after seeing the yield curve chart at the WSJ's MarketBeat blog "The Yield Curve’s Downside" and figured there should be a VH1 vid called "Carry Trade". Alas, no. This came up:
yen carry trade Mariah Carey Jim Carrey Drew Harry Caray John Kerry Cary Grant Carrie Fisher Karrie Webb
which if you recall, is very close to a M*A*S*H bit:
"I will not carry a gun, Frank. When I got thrown into this war I had a clear understanding with the Pentagon: no guns. I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I'll even 'hari-kari' if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun."

Anyway, back to the hedge against all risks, guys (Haar's) if you remember I was amused: "Then they gear it up 2.7 times and are showing their investors 12% risk free. At that point in the story I started laughing so hard my eyes were watering."

I wonder how they're doing.
So far the Yen went against them, fast.
Then came back, some.
The treasury head-faked higher and is now getting hammered.
There was an earthquake in Japan.
Lenders stopped lending to little carry-trade shops.
There's probably an asteroid on the way.
I'll check in with the "financial journalist", "author of 20 books", who wrote them up and ask if he spotted the word "drawdown" in their Q3 report to investors.