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Comment by edutechnion | Hacker News Reader

Short version: banker provides liquidity to the markets and buys up junk bonds from panicked sellers at 40 cents on the dollar. Banker then sells the bonds for more money as the panic dissipates. Some people wonder if important banks like GS should still be making volatile bets like this.

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GS has about 90 bln in total equity and nearly a trillion dollars in total assets.

100m sounds high but 100m is a rounding error especially if spread across 100s or even 1000s of trades.

Note that they made $100 million. I did not see a value at risk, gross notional or netted, presented.

TFA says billions bought and sold before fading out to ads.

I guess making 5% returns isn't such a big deal when you are playing with billions of other people's money.

If they had 100s of such trades, the management wouldn't look at it as rounding error. That's reductio ad absurdum that is.

GS seams to run fairly tight shop I doubt they take very large unhedged positions.

Really now?

Goldman Sachs will pay $5.06bn for its role in the 2008 financial crisis, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. The settlement, over the sale of mortgage-backed securities from 2005 to 2007, was first announced in January.

“This resolution holds Goldman Sachs accountable for its serious misconduct in falsely assuring investors that securities it sold were backed by sound mortgages, when it knew that they were full of mortgages that were likely to fail,” acting associate attorney general Stuart Delery said in a statement.

-- https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/11/goldman-sac...

Your quote is about honesty. OPs quote was about unhedged rusk. They have little to no relation. You can be both a dishonest trader AND a smart one.

Actually the comment I was responding to was about "running a tight shop" -- which is about operational integrity in general (not just on the matter of unhedged risk).

In the, you know, "would you buy a used car from these guys?" sense.

Perhaps a difference of definition but I don't consider a tight shop to have anything to do with morals or integrity. Tight shops I always considered efficient and optimized. Car dealerships are shady, but they can run a tight shop.

Until they get caught (and heavily fined). Whereupon management suddenly decides that maybe those practices weren't so "tight" after all.

The only reason GS is still around is because they did what they did. They protected their shareholders the fine is trivial (less than 10%) compared to the losses they would have taken if they followed the course of action that everyone else did.

A $13b bailout on suspiciously favorable terms had something to do with it, also.

What is suspiciously favorable about it? the terms were uniform. The real kick back to all banks was the unwind of AIG.

What is suspiciously favorable about it?

I trust that you're aware of the basic chronology. If not, it should be fairly easy for you to look into.

Yep and? Every IB had to secure a deal GS got money from Berkshire Hathaway, everyone else got acquired Lehman could not secure a deal. Unlike in every other deal government was not providing downside guarantees for Berkshire Hathaway investment in GS. Government did provide huge guarantees to JPM and every other bank that acquired an IB.

Absolutely right! Its usually context specific.

Operational integrity for investment bank is to a very significant degree risk management. Integrity as in having control over something not in a moral sense. In the case you referenced I'd rather see GS's counterparties taking more blame. The whole we are poor guys running multi-billion dollar funds and charging millions in fees didn't do due diligence and want to blame someone else thing is pure BS.

They made money and later payed a fine , how is this disputes a statement that GS does not take large unhedged positions?

The point is that the assertion you attempted to make in favor of the idea that GS just of course wouldn't take large unhedged positions -- "they run a tight shop" -- just doesn't have a great deal of solid backing.

If you provide an example of a large unhedged position that GS has on the books I'll totally believe you.

You can believe whatever you want. Based on my own research over the years -- and personal dealings with people who have worked there -- I tend not to trust that "shop".

Actually they hedged there by lying and selling their crap on instead of holding the baby.

Why shouldn't they? If they make risky bets that don't pan out, they will make their losses will the government's problem.

Yeah. Imho, the problem is the fact GS is important and has such sizable market share than what they are doing exactly.

If we had 20 large banks the size of GS, GS doing stupid shit and tanking wouldn't be an issue.

Buy low sell high

This. Buying low is a negligible loss for a bank if things don't turn out the way they want it to.

Depends on liquidity

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