Discredit derivatives: Difference between revisions

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To be sure, the funds were largely right about that — no-one ''does'' care about that sort of thing in the City — but European regulators, post-Brexit, decided ''they'' did, and began holding [[hedge fund]]s to account for false advertising if they claimed the sanctimony of [[ESG]] on paper without observing it in practice. Especially British ones.
To be sure, the funds were largely right about that — no-one ''does'' care about that sort of thing in the City — but European regulators, post-Brexit, decided ''they'' did, and began holding [[hedge fund]]s to account for false advertising if they claimed the sanctimony of [[ESG]] on paper without observing it in practice. Especially British ones.
===Early years: single-name [[discredit put]]s===
===Early years: single-name [[discredit put]]s===
Barkley’s idea was simple: if it was okay to extract the crappy credit profile from a [[CDO squared|portfolio]] of [[mortgage|mortgages]] off and lay ''that'' off on someone with “sufficiently deep market expertise and advanced models to bear the risk indefinitely”,<ref>Yes, I know what you are thinking: a sleepy Landesbanken from Lower Saxony would be ''exactly'' such a someone, right?</ref> why not do the same thing with the unwanted ignominy of outrageous investments?  
Barkley’s idea was simple: if it was okay to extract the crappy credit profile from a [[CDO squared|portfolio]] of [[mortgage|mortgages]] off and lay ''that'' off on someone with “sufficiently deep market expertise and advanced models to bear the risk indefinitely”<ref>Yes, I know what you are thinking: a sleepy Landesbanken from Lower Saxony would be ''exactly'' such a someone, right?</ref> why not do the same thing with the unwanted ignominy of outrageous investments?  


Barkley began to construct instruments — at first, simple [[put option]]s — laying off the shame on those who could most easily absorb it; namely — and this was Barkley’s real genius — ''the very badly-run, environment-wrecking corporates that were polluting the hedge fund portfolios in the first place''. The [[hedge fund]] would write an [[at-the-money]] [[stigma put]] to, for example, the Golden Crown Palm Oil Company of Sudan Pty. Ltd. (and for which it would ask little by way of premium; after all, really, what did Golden Crown care? It was ripping up the Bandingilo national park already, so what is a little more remorse?), thus getting rid of the fund’s disgrace for investing in ''that very company''.
Barkley began to construct instruments — at first, simple [[put option]]s — laying off the shame on those who could most easily absorb it; namely — and this was Barkley’s real genius — ''the very badly-run, environment-wrecking corporates that were polluting the hedge fund portfolios in the first place''. The [[hedge fund]] would write an [[at-the-money]] [[stigma put]] to, for example, the Golden Crown Palm Oil Company of Sudan Pty. Ltd. (and for which it would ask little by way of premium; after all, really, what did Golden Crown care? It was ripping up the Bandingilo national park already, so what is a little more remorse?), thus getting rid of the fund’s disgrace for investing in ''that very company''.