Skip to main content

Do Charge-off Rates impact the UltraShort Real Estate ETF?

You may have noticed today that the ProShares UltraShort Real Estate ETF (SRS) was up strongly Monday (3/16/09), tacking on almost 16%. This is far in excess of the 4% that the UltraShort Financial ETF (SKF) rose.

What gives?

It could be that investors are beginning to realize that the situation in commercial real estate is becoming worse than what we have seen in residential real estate. The Fed provides the data from which we constructed the following chart. It contrasts the charge-off rates for residential real estate loans and commercial real estate loans.

Real Estate Charge-off Rates
Whereas it looks like charge-offs in the residential sector are beginning to moderate, it appears that charge-offs in the commercial sector are really taking off, increasing rapidly and surpassing the rate for residential loans. As of the end of the 2008-Q4 there was no moderation at all in the slope of commercial loan charge-offs.

Many financial institutions have seen their stock prices decimated when mortgage-backed securities (MBS) imploded, typically due to the underlying residential mortgages going through delinquency, foreclosure and the charge-off process. It stands to reason that banks facing these levels of charge-offs for commercial real estate will be under further pressure. Banks will be running into problems not only with the actual loans but also due to the decline in value of commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS).

With all this turmoil in the commercial real estate sector, it is quite reasonable to assume that real estate investment trusts (REITs), which almost universally are concentrated in commercial real estate, not residential, are feeling the impact in a big way. Projects are left incomplete, properties go into receivership, write-downs occur, etc. This is bad for investors in REITs but good for anyone who owns an inverse real estate ETF like SRS.

Chart of SRS, 03-16-2009
This rally we have seen over the past week drove SRS down from over $100 to almost $60. This may turn out to be a pretty good buying opportunity for SRS. It appears the bear has further to run in the commercial real estate sector.

Disclosure: small position in SRS
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Brazil - in a bubble or on a roll?

A couple of years ago, no one recognized the real estate bubble even though it was under everyone's nose. Now, analysts and bloggers are seeing bubbles everywhere they look. One of them, they say is in Brazil whose Bovespa stock market index has doubled in the last 12 months. Does the bubble accusation hold water? I don't think so and here are 7 reasons why Brazil is by no means a bubble economy: Exports have held up over the past year thanks to demand from China for Brazil's soya exports and iron ore. This was helped by the the Brazilian government's drive to improve trade links with Asia and Africa. Export diversification, spurred by a more active trade policy and increased focus on "south-south" trade under current president Lula, helped mitigate the decline in demand from OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries A "sensible" economic framework has been in place since the 1990's. This has included inflation
4 comments
Read more

Thursday Bounce: Trend Busters, Swing Signals and Trend Leaders for July 9, 2009

This is a quick post to announce that we have published Thursday's Trend Leaders, Swing Signals and Trend Busters at Alert HQ . All are based on daily data. Today we have the following: 72 Swing Signals -- A couple of days ago we had 35 signals, today we have twice as many. Happily, we now have 65 BUY signals, a mere 4 SELL Signals plus 3 Strong BUYs. Whoo-hoo! 56 Trend Leaders , all in strong up-trends according to Aroon, MACD and DMI. There are 18 new stocks that made today's list and 60 that fell off Tuesday's list. 48 Trend Busters of which 5 are BUY signals and 43 are SELL signals The view from Alert HQ -- Talk about mixed signals. If you look at our Swing Signals list you would think the market was in the middle of a big bounce. BUY signals are swamping the SELL signals and we even have a few Strong BUYs. Yes, there's a good sprinkling of tech stocks and tech ETFs but the distribution is pretty broad-based with a good number of different sectors represented, eve
1 comment
Read more

Unlock Stock Market Profits - Key #1

This is the first in an ongoing series of articles where I discuss what I feel are keys to successful investing. It is based on a post that provides a summary of the ten keys that individual investors should use to identify profitable stock trades. ( Click here to read the original post ) There are two basic steps to investing. First, you need to find stocks that seem to have some potential. Then you have to determine whether these stocks are actually good investments. There are many stocks that at first glance look interesting, but further research reveals that there are too many negatives to warrant taking a position. This first post in the series starts at the beginning: getting good investment ideas. Key #1: If something special is happening to a stock, it will be reflected in some kind of unusual activity in the markets. As individual investors, we will never be the first to know; however, unusual activity can be an early sign that allows us to follow the Wall Street professional
4 comments
Read more