A while back I asked where were you when the malls and Main Street went dark, and I was crushed this morning when I found the an$wer on page D5:
"How hedge funds profited off the pain of malls" by Kate Kelly New York Times, August 24, 2020
NEW YORK — Catie McKee was nervous. It was last October, and the 31-year-old hedge fund analyst, who had been scrutinizing the mortgages on the nation’s malls, was convinced that some of those malls would default on their loans. She and her colleagues had even bet a substantial amount of money on that likelihood.
McKee was about to make her case to Carl Icahn, one of the country’s best-known investors, who had made a similar wager and invited her team to discuss the trade. Nothing would bolster her confidence — and the prospects for her trade — more than if the billionaire and onetime corporate raider backed her up.
Icahn is a member of the tribe and was briefly a part of the Trump administration before he left over in$ide trading $u$picions.
She needn’t have worried. As McKee sat in Icahn’s wood-paneled boardroom with a sweeping view of Manhattan’s Central Park, discussing her thesis with the 83-year-old investor, she realized they shared the same outlook. Both agreed that e-commerce, changing consumer habits and evolving demographics had pummeled all malls to some degree in recent years, but some were far worse off than others. So by betting on their demise, both could profit handsomely — which they did.
How is that view of Manhattan looking today?
Icahn, whose hostile takeover of TWA in the 1980s established him as a major dealmaker, has made $1.3 billion on the trade since that meeting, and the investors that made the trade within McKee’s firm, MP Securitized Credit Partners, more than doubled their money. They are among a handful of investors who have, collectively, made hundreds of millions of dollars on similar trades this year.
There is something discomfiting about the idea of getting fantastically rich off someone else’s misfortune, which is what happens when a “short” trade — or bet against a stock or industry — succeeds. The contrast is even more startling given that the pandemic, which has devastated the economy and hurt the livelihoods of millions, has turbocharged the bets that Icahn, McKee and others placed on the downfall of malls, but on Wall Street, such brazenness is celebrated. Investors love little more than a contrarian bet that pays off, a combination of math and seeming magic that allows them to find a market disruption before everyone else and score a big win.
This is sickeningly disgusting to read.
The article presents itself as in-depth reporting and news, and yet it is a horse out the barn situation and the Times is damn near applauding the plunder with it's colorful terminology and insulting phrasing -- and why wouldn't they? They are promoting the Great Re$et, and can only be seen as mouthpieces of evil.
This isn't something they will stay focused on, either, as they peddle their propaganda and garbage day after day.
The trade Icahn and McKee met to discuss, known as the “mall short” in financial circles, is the latest in a long-standing Wall Street tradition that some criticize as bottom-feeding because it preys on failure and can push a business over the edge while contributing little to the economy. Most investors buy stocks and bonds with the expectation that they will rise in value. A short is the opposite, and their defenders say they can help expose corporate fraud or deflate a dangerously overvalued asset, which can aid the smooth functioning of markets. More than a decade ago, some investors famously profited off the collapse of the housing market, even as the United States plunged into a financial crisis. Their trade came to be known as “the Big Short,” inspiring a book and a movie.
Oh, look, profiting off others' misery is a TRADITION.
Btw, there was another short that did not, and they didn't mention the far better film.
“We periodically do shorts, and this is one of the best that I’ve ever seen,” Icahn said in an interview last week, echoing what he had told McKee. The two, who were introduced by a former colleague of Icahn’s, have stayed in touch.
Daniel McNamara, a colleague of McKee’s, called it “the Big Short 2.0.”
I had held off in commenting that this is a COMPLETE RERUN of the MBS SCANDAL from 2008-09, and it means nothing has changed despite Dodd-Frank and Obama!
It's the BIG LOOT by the OLIGARCHS before COMMUNISM is delivered to America!
Brick-and-mortar retail has been in distress for years. Trapped between the growth of online shopping and the popularity of discount chains, many retailers have struggled to find a foothold in the changing firmament. The nation’s roughly 1,000 shopping malls (excluding strip and outlet malls) have borne the brunt of the problems, with hundreds of them fighting low occupancy and the loss of major stores, known as anchors.
The coronavirus pandemic, which prompted stay-at-home orders, increased the financial strain on malls by choking off much-needed foot traffic and cash flow.
“The pandemic sped up the rate of demise for CMBX 6 malls by being the final straw for a lot of struggling retailers and mall owners,” McKee said, referring to the obscure real estate index that she bet against because of its exposure to troubled malls.
It's clear now that the COVID CRI$I$ has been a COVER for the INTENTIONAL DESTRUCTION of the ECONOMY and MIDDLE CLASS by with tyrannical lockdown orders and bans on gatherings so we, the people, will not lynch those involved.
Private equity fund Apollo Global Management, which runs an internal hedge fund that focuses on credit investing, made more than $100 million shorting the CMBX 6 and other commercial real estate securities — one of the fund’s most successful trades of the year. Jason Mudrick, whose New York hedge fund, Mudrick Capital, focuses on distressed investments, estimated that he had made the same amount. So did Scott Burg, chief investment officer at Deer Park Road, a fund in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
Like I said, it was the MBS scandal all over again. They bundled crap and it's likely the Fed bought it, but the talk around the office is this:
"Leon Black, the billionaire chairman, CEO, and co-founder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management, will be subpoenaed by the US Virgin Islands’ attorney general for information about his decades-long business ties with Jeffrey Epstein, the New York Times reported Sunday. The territory’s attorney general, Denise N. George, informed a local court on Thursday that she would issue civil subpoenas to Black and several entities connected to him. The subpoenas will seek financial statements and tax returns for a number of entities, including ones that manage some of Black’s $9 billion wealth. They will also go to Apollo and entities that help manage his art collection, the New York Times said. “Apollo never did any business with Mr. Epstein at any point in time,” according to a spokesperson for the New York-based private equity firm. After Epstein’s arrest last year, Black also assured investors in Apollo’s funds that his relationship with Epstein didn’t extend to the private equity company. He said that Epstein provided certain services to his family partnership and entities relating to tax, estate planning, and philanthropic advice. Epstein died in jail while facing sex-trafficking charges last August. His death was ruled a suicide."
I think I'm going to be sick, so can you tell me where are the mall restrooms?
Yeah, the Globe doesn't want to talk about that, and why would they?
Their site looks more and more like a sex-trafficking site these days as they help cover for the elite ruling cla$$ and their pedophile sex rings.
Sorry to short feel them.
The CMBX 6 index is intended to track a basket of bond products, each of which contains bundles of individual mortgages to commercial borrowers, more than 2,000 in total. Those products are then sliced into brackets, known as tranches, and assigned credit ratings ranging from AAA to BB, according to their perceived level of risk.
Like I said, it's the MBS scandal all over again.
So did the accountants lie again like last time, seeing as they were being paid for the evaluations by the hedge houses?
The CMBX 6, which tracks the performance of mortgages issued in 2012, has been a target for short sellers because of its relatively strong exposure to malls. According to an analysis by Trepp, 40 percent of the property loans tracked by the CMBX 6 are in the retail sector, giving it the highest exposure to retailers of any CMBX index. (The balance of the mortgages are in lodging, residential and office, and industrial sectors.) Of the retail mortgages the CMBX 6 tracks, 39 are in US malls, many of which have 10-year mortgages coming due in 2022.
The gobbledegook almost makes you forget this was a massive looting scheme!
Deer Park Road’s Burg, who specializes in complicated bond investments and said his firm had done well by betting heavily on risky home borrowers in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, adopted the mall short before the virus hit. His research suggested similarities between the lax way that home loans were signed in the run-up to the last crisis and the underwriting of many retail mortgages. He also thought there were too many malls.
So he KNEW what was coming like BEZOS and the SENATORS selling their stock before the bottom dropped (paging Bill Barr).
The American have been so had, m and they have not a clue.
By the middle of May, the portion of the CMBX 6 with a BBB– rating, which had begun the year trading strongly but was especially popular with short sellers, had fallen more than 30 points. It has recovered only a few points since then. “It’s an absolute perfect storm, unfortunately, for the commercial real estate market,” Burg said. “We see very little that the Fed or government can possibly do to prop this up when there’s so much excess supply.”
SIGH!
That excess supply could easily be repurposed as COVID Concentration camps, complete with gates on the front of the stores turned cells.
As least someone got rich off all this. Sort of makes all the looting and tyranny worth it.
When McKee, who this year became a portfolio manager at MP, and McNamara, her colleague, met Icahn, their main fund had already invested more than $100 million in the short trade. They were hoping to do more, but some of the investors they were pitching were uncertain, which was why McKee was hoping for Icahn’s endorsement.
In February, McKee and McNamara started a fund with $30 million in investor capital that was dedicated solely to the mall short. Within a month, they had more than doubled that money, so they closed out the fund in May and distributed the proceeds to investors. MP still retains a short position in its main fund.
“I’m definitely bearish on malls,” McKee said, “but I think it’s a very case-by-case basis. I don’t think all malls are dying.”
No, we all will be and the malls left standing will serve the elite cla$$ in their Great Re$et.
--more--"
I $uppo$e it is all a gamble at be$t:
"Rhode Island’s two casinos laid off more than 1,300 workers combined earlier this month, according to documents filed with state labor officials. More than 1,000 workers at Twin River Casino Hotel in Lincoln and nearly 300 at Tiverton Casino Hotel lost their jobs, Twin River Worldwide Holdings reported to the state Department of Labor and Training, The Providence Journal reported on Sunday. The layoffs became effective Aug. 11, the same day Twin River reported a $24 million second-quarter loss based in part on casinos being temporarily shut down during the coronavirus pandemic. Workers were furloughed during that period. Rhode Island’s casinos have since reopened."
When the lights come back you will find yourself $itting all alone.
