Greenspan's Body Count: Roy Kim

Gothamist:

A 58-year-old taxi driver killed himself in his Queens home this month, marking the eight suicide in the taxi industry this year. The suicide was confirmed by the NYC Medical Examiner on Wednesday, just as the City Council passed bills to give counseling to taxi drivers facing financial and mental health issues.

The Medical Examiner confirmed Kim committed suicide in his Bayside home on November 5th, the Post reports, adding that "Kim, who had just purchased his taxi medallion last year, was more than $500,000 in debt from the deal and struggling to stay afloat." His friend, taxi driver Young Lee, told the tabloid, "He was in a lot of debt from that. For a while he was making money but then it just went slowly down and down and down. All drivers are really struggling."

Greenspan's Body Count stands at 265.

Yes, Democrats will even lie about rape for political gain

Thanks, CNN and NY Times, for working these nutjobs into such a lather.

OpenSecrets.org on Judy Munro-Leighton,the woman who admitted lying about being raped by Brett Kavanaugh:

Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 records

Category	Contributor	Occupation	Date	Amount	Recipient
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	JEFFERSON COMMUNITY COLLEGE	09-23-2004	$250.00	Mongiardo, Daniel (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	10-04-2018	$25.00	Heitkamp, Heidi (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	10-10-2018	$25.00	O'Rourke, Beto (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	10-10-2018	$25.00	McCaskill, Claire (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	10-16-2018	$25.00	Heitkamp, Heidi (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	10-08-2016	$10.00	Kander, Jason (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	RETIRED	10-25-2016	$10.00	Clinton, Hillary (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	JEFFERSON COMMUNITY COLLEGE	10-19-2004	$250.00	Mongiardo, Daniel (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	JEFF COMM COLEGE	06-30-2004	$200.00	Kerry, John (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	11-07-2017	$15.00	Jones, Doug (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	11-21-2017	$15.00	Jones, Doug (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	10-15-2018	$10.00	Garrett, Janet (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	JEFFERSON COMMUNITY COLLEGE/PROFESS	09-30-2004	$250.00	Miller, Tony (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	12-11-2017	$15.00	Jones, Doug (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	11-14-2017	$15.00	Jones, Doug (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	11-26-2017	$25.00	Jones, Doug (D)
Unknown	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	10-16-2018	$25.00	Moveon.org
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	10-17-2018	$10.00	Garrett, Janet (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	RETIRED	10-29-2016	$10.00	Clinton, Hillary (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	JEFFERSON COMM COLLEGE	03-31-2006	$250.00	Horne, Andrew J (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	12-03-2017	$25.00	Jones, Doug (D)
Money to Candidates	MUNRO-LEIGHTON, JUDY LOUISVILLE, KY 40204	NOT EMPLOYED	11-28-2017	$15.00	Jones, Doug (D)

You Walk Away, student loan edition

Back in the housing crash, there was a phenomenon known as "jingle mail" or "you walk away" where sad, underwater homeowners solved their problems by defaulting.

Now You Walk Away comes to student debt.

He now lives in a concrete house in the village of Uchakkada for $50 a month. His backyard is filled with coconut trees and chickens. “I saw four elephants just yesterday,” he said, adding that he hopes to never set foot in a Walmart again.

His debt is currently on its way to default. But more than 9,000 miles away from Colorado, Haag said, his student loans don’t feel real anymore.

“It’s kind of like, if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it really exist?” he said.

What's wrong with Wealthfront's Risk Parity Fund? Sleuthing using regression analysis

In January, robo-advisor Wealthfront launched a risk parity fund. Risk parity means investing in multiple asset classes, and using leverage to increase the returns from the less volatile asset classes such as bonds.

The fund immediately attracted criticism for its high fees, which it soon cut. But it turns out there's more wrong with Wealthfront's risk parity fund than the fees. In April, I noted that the fund was already trailing both stocks and bonds, and trailing AQR's risk parity fund (AQRIX) by 4%. I suspected they had way too much leverage to bonds in a rising interest rate environment, and I investigated using a very simple regression analysis.

Indeed! Run the regression against just a 2-asset model of S&P and Lehman Agg. You'll find a huge beta to bonds -- about 3x that of AQR's risk parity fund. Sad!

— W.C. Varones (@wcvarones) April 23, 2018

You can do regression analysis like this with a number of programs from Excel to more sophisticated tools like Python and Matlab. You take a series of daily returns to the fund, the series of daily returns to different asset classes, dump them into the regression engine and it will tell you how much the fund's performance is driven by those asset classes. Putting just two asset classes into the regression, the S&P and a broad bond index, quickly revealed that the fund was highly exposed to bonds.

That's not where you want to be if rates keep rising. And that's exactly what's happened in the 5 1/2 months since. As rates have risen, the fund has underperformed even more, and is now down 14% for the year and is more than 7% worse than AQR's fund.

With more days of trading data, we can now run a more complete regression analysis to see what the heck is in Wealthfront's fund. As a baseline, let's look at AQR's fund first. Here's the regression output using a lot of common asset classes (I tried a few others, but these were the best fit).

Now that is a beautiful regression. The high R-Square means that with 8 generic asset classes, we have explained 88% of the returns of AQRIX. The high t-values and low p-values ("Pr > |t|") mean that each of these asset classes is highly certain to be a driver of AQR's returns. The parameter estimate ("beta") means how much AQRIX is expected to trade up with a 1% move in each asset class. So the biggest betas are to bonds ("agg"), high-yield ("junk"), commodities ("comx" is the return to Pimco's commodity fund with the returns to oil and gold backed out), and the S&P 500 ("sp"). If you add all the betas, you get 2.11, meaning for every dollar you put in the fund, you're effectively getting $2.11 worth of exposure to the asset classes.

Now let's look at Wealthfront.

Just 5 asset classes explain 82% of the return, with bonds ("agg") having the greatest beta by far. Note that Wealthfront's pure bond interest-rate bet is greater than AQR's bond, high-yield, and REIT exposures combined.

The portfolio managers are a couple of Ph.D.s who I suspect suffer from Menzie Chinn Syndrome -- i.e. too much math, too little common sense. If your backtest period is during the past 37 years of historically declining bond yields, you shouldn't count on that trend continuing forever.

Life Imitates Art

Greenspan visits the Emerald Isle

Irish Examiner:

Insolvency experts are warning that mortgage arrears are still leading some homeowners to thoughts of suicide as the level of insurmountable household debt remains stubbornly high.

The Association of Personal Insolvency Practitioners (APIP) also says the ongoing problem of mortgage arrears is going to exacerbate the homelessness crisis as lenders lose patience and push for repossession.

Eugene McDarby, APIP chairman, said the crisis is clear to the 80-plus PIPs operating across the country.

“In the past week alone, I have met three clients who have admitted to giving consideration to taking their own lives,” he said.

“To wake up every morning knowing that you are in danger of losing your home would take its toll on the most mentally tough person.

Most recent Central Bank figures show that almost one in every 11 residential mortgages — representing 66,479 households — was in arrears at the end of June this year.

Greenspan's Body Count: Shannan Watts, Celeste Watts, Bella Watts

Fox News:

Shanann Watts called her husband “my ROCK!” and the “best dad us girls could ask for” in what appeared to be an idyllic life on social media.

However, behind the scene, it was a different picture that ended with her and her daughters’ lives this week.

Watts and her husband Chris – who is accused of killing her and their two girls – appeared to be in dire financial strain.

Three years ago, they jointly filed for bankruptcy, citing more than $70,000 in debt, KDVR-TV reported.

The couple had a combined income of $90,000 in 2014. But they also had tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, along with student loans and medical bills — for a total of $70,000 in unsecured claims on top of a sizable mortgage.

They said in the filing their nearly $3,000 monthly mortgage payments and $600 in monthly car payments formed the bulk of their $4,900 in monthly expenses.

On Wednesday, Chris Watts, 33, was arrested and held on three counts of first-degree murder for allegedly killing his 34-year-old wife and their daughters Celeste, 3, and Bella, 4. He was held without bond on Thursday with charges expected Monday.

Greenspan's Body Count stands at 264.