Andy Redleaf, founder of hedge fund Whitebox Advisors, discusses liability management, bank balance sheets, and leverage with Ted Seides.
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Redleaf: Commission deregulation forced Wall Street to trade against customers
“In fact, the established firms moved from commission business to trading businesses, trading against their customers, really. The prop desks became established. And then subsequently, as volume exploded, as, in fact, commission business could work. The prop tr…”
Opinion
Andy Redleaf: Stock index futures only enabled destructive home day trading
“From an investment, from an, you know, investor point of view, there was absolutely no use for the product. It enabled pajama boys, you know, people to trade at home the market on a, you know, 10 minute, five minute, 10 minute hourly basis, which, you know, is…”
Opinion
Redleaf: Originate-to-distribute and misaligned incentives did not cause the 2008 crisis
“People and regulators and so forth talk about the originating to distribute as the problem of the financial crisis. I think that that's completely wrong. It's not the case that incentives were misaligned. I mean, all of Lehman's employees Had the bulk of their…”
Insight
Redleaf: Corporate America is the only remaining arbitrageur for orphaned securities
“I see there being more permanently orphaned securities, and, you know, I mean, really, The only people to, ah, to be the effective arbitrageurs or to close differences is, is corporate America, and corporate America is sort of slower.”
Insight
Andy Redleaf: Outperforming an index mathematically requires leverage, concentration, or turnover
“Returns above an index have to, mathematically, they have, the possible sources are leverage, concentration, or turnover.”
Opinion
Redleaf: Black-box funds rarely have proprietary secrets too complex or valuable to reveal
“And the thing about a Black, the Black Box, I always thought the Black Box firms, you're telling people, That either our system is so complicated, so detailed, so computationally intense, or what have you, that there's no point in opening it up, because it jus…”