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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Logain Ablar who wrote (116422)2/17/2016 9:17:08 AM
From: Pogeu Mahone  Respond to of 217744
 
jebbush.com



To: Logain Ablar who wrote (116422)2/17/2016 7:24:01 PM
From: TobagoJack  Respond to of 217744
 
bass' wager is certainly a topic of conversation on this side of the pond of tranquility

mostly in three flavours, pro / con / "what instruments is he using?"

my participation in the conversation basically comes down to ...

(i) i believe bass is wrong, irrespective of whatever instruments he may be using, though the instruments can still pay off whether china collapses or not

(ii) i do not believe bass is naive enough to wager directly against the listed china banks, for that would simply invite disaster as only a sovereign can dish out (i.e. keep the listed shares as 'money-good' but for national security reasons severely restrict trading in such shares)

(iii) i suppose bass can take positions in rmb forwards, but if so, his counterparty (presumably an international big bank) shall rape him w/ impunity as only alignment w/ a sovereign can afford

(iv) the overarching world macro seems to boil down to USA-PRC, and peripherally EU, and distant peripheral Japan, and as more of the world slips from obvious ZIRP to apparent NIRP, the surer bets could simply be

- gold
- cash denominated in home currency
- yielding real estate w/i fiscally-balanced territories

(v) should one wish to take a position against PRC / RMB, perhaps one ought to also take another position against USA / USD, because it is unclear to me which wager is more sure

and yes, a while to play out should be for sure, 2018 - 2026 window is my read.

if 2018, we would be fortunate.

i fear 2026, but we would be entertained all along the path, and the sudden acceleration near the end-point would be thrilling, when we can least afford thrills.



To: Logain Ablar who wrote (116422)7/10/2020 4:21:04 AM
From: TobagoJack  Read Replies (4) | Respond to of 217744
 
Hello LA, Re << You know this will take a while to play out and of course one can be right in theory and wrong in timing and be wiped out >> response to my post Message 30460874

Topical again, as Kyle is doubling down.

bloomberg.com

Kyle Bass Takes on a Widowmaker Currency Trade

Betting against the Hong Kong Dollar hasn’t worked for decades. This time doesn’t look any different.

Mark Gilbert
July 10, 2020, 1:00 AM GMT+2



Kyle Bass, chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management LP.

Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

Mark Gilbert is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering asset management. He previously was the London bureau chief for Bloomberg News. He is also the author of "Complicit: How Greed and Collusion Made the Credit Crisis Unstoppable."
Read more opinion Follow @ScouseView on Twitter

LISTEN TO ARTICLE
Hong Kong has maintained a strict relationship between its currency and the U.S. dollar since 1983. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has intervened whenever the Hong Kong dollar has threatened to breach a designated trading band, most recently set in 2005 at HK$7.75 to HK$7.85. As other fixed-currency regimes have come and gone, this one has been phenomenally successful.

Nevertheless, hedge fund manager Kyle Bass reckons its days are numbered.

Total ControlThe Hong Kong Monetary Authority has kept its currency in a strict trading range against the U.S. dollar for decades

Source: Bloomberg

A few months ago, Bass began soliciting potential investors for a new fund planned to start on June 1 that would make a winner-takes-all bet against the Hong Kong dollar. His firm, Hayman Capital Management LP, plans to leverage the wager by 200 times, using the options market. Investors stand to make 64 times their money should the Hong Kong currency decline by 40% against its U.S. counterpart. But the downside is 100%; if the peg remains intact after 18 months, they’ll lose everything.

Bass isn’t the first money manager trying to make a profit from betting against the peg. Billionaire investor George Soros made a similar bet in 1998, during the Asian financial crisis. He failed. “They actually did a very good job defending the Hong Kong dollar,” he conceded in 2009.

London-based hedge fund manager Crispin Odey spent two years running the trade before abandoning it in mid-2018. “There are lots of good bets around,” he told my Bloomberg News colleague Nishant Kumar in August. “Hong Kong dollar is not there.” And as anti-government protests engulfed Hong Kong last year, other hedge funds began to speculate that capital would flee and undermine the currency fix.

But even as a geopolitical row escalates over China’s recent imposition of laws that restrict political criticism in the former British colony, the currency is gaining rather than declining. The HKMA sold HK$13.4 billion ($1.7 billion) on Thursday, buying U.S. dollars to prevent its own currency from strengthening, my Bloomberg News colleague Sofia Horta e Costa reported. In total, the city’s de facto central bank has spent $13.5 billion this year to stop the local currency from breaching its maximum permitted value of HK$7.75.

Stronger, Not WeakerThe Hong Kong dollar has spent the past few months bumping against its strongest permitted value against the U.S. dollar

Source: Bloomberg

That renewed test of its upper trading limit comes even after Bloomberg News reported Wednesday that advisers to President Donald Trump have argued in favor of undermining the peg to retaliate against China. The currency market seems to be concurring with the economists and traders who reckon market hostility won’t break out between the U.S. and China, arguing it would mostly hurt Hong Kong’s banks rather than China.

Moreover, risk reversals — the difference in volatility between calls and puts that indicates where options traders are anticipating a currency’s value will head — suggest there’s minimal speculation about the Hong Kong dollar breaking its range, and less than there was either a few months ago or last year.

All Calm on the Currency FrontOptions traders haven't raised their bets on the Hong Kong dollar breaking its link with the U.S. dollar

Source: Bloomberg

Bass, who said in January that Hong Kong faces “a full-fledged banking crisis” this year, has been betting against the currency peg since at least May 2019. So far, he isn’t faring any better than his predecessors. The widowmaking trade is striking again.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Mark Gilbert at magilbert@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Nicole Torres at ntorres51@bloomberg.net

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