(Un)Calculated Risk | by Peter Orr of Intuitive Analytics

Municipal Defaults - 36x Higher Than You Think (and other myths)

Posted by Peter Orr on Aug 16, 2012

Enough research will tend to support your theory.     - Murphy’s Law of Research

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The RIGHT refunding discount rates to use? Wrong question...

Posted by Peter Orr on Aug 14, 2012

 I finally know what distinguishes man from the other beasts: financial worries.
- Jules Renard

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The ‘Formula that Killed Wall Street?’ or ‘Know A Bad Rate Model When You See It’

Posted by Peter Orr on Jun 19, 2012

"Copulas are generally an early doodling activity in an area." - Anonymous Street quant

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VIDEO: Cashflow Risk Statistics for Tax-exempt Debt Management

Posted by Peter Orr on May 01, 2012

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."  - Henry Ford 

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VIDEO: SIFMA and LIBOR Interest Rate Model for Public Finance

Posted by Peter Orr on Apr 21, 2012

Lots of people think rate models are the sole domain of astrophysicists who've gone through a career change. In this video, we break down the details of a simple but very powerful interest rate model that captures the fact that variable rates....well, vary. It's a companion to our Cashflow Model Example.xls and whitepaper on Interest Rate Models for Liability Management.  Enjoy and let us know what you think!

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VIDEO: Analyzing Fixed vs Floating using CFaR and Product Efficiency

Posted by Peter Orr on Apr 13, 2012

Using SmartModels Stage III, this video is a case study in analyzing whether to issue fixed or  variable rate debt, both with and without cash on the balance sheet serving as a natural hedge. We calculate Cash Flow at Risk (CFaR) for the VRDBs and then graph the tradeoff between average annual (expected) debt service and CFaR. In the "with balance sheet cash" case, an efficient frontier-esque chart results from showing an optimal amount of VRDBs to issue. 

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Refunding PV Savings - Arbitrage Yield or Zero Rates?

Posted by David De la Nuez on Mar 29, 2012

"If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going" - Professor Irwin Corey

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Minimize Refunding Negative Arbitrage or Maximize Savings?

Posted by Peter Orr on Mar 19, 2012

"Don't ever get your speedometer confused with your clock, like I did once, because the faster you go, the later you think you are."  - Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

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Changing Times: Our 2012 New Year's Resolution to Public Finance

Posted by Peter Orr on Jan 06, 2012

“I think the whole idea is to look for good ideas, be innovative. I was interested in things even if I didn’t have much to do with them. When I had a job to do, an assignment, I did things with it. I built a fire under it.”     - Joseph Siegel, aka Mr. CUSIP

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How much Apple is in your Public Finance?

Posted by Peter Orr on Nov 16, 2011

With Steve Jobs’ recent passing and new biography on the bookshelves it’s been nearly impossible to avoid learning something about the guy who completely re-engineered some pretty major markets: portable music player, cell phones, and now the tablet computer. The thing that has intrigued me as we wash in the continuous stream of Jobs exposure is how he seemed to successfully embrace a number of contradictions. A Zen student/philosopher but also tyrannical to the point of one former colleague suggesting he would’ve made an excellent King of France. He was solidly in the billionaires club yet lived in a very modest home that he often left unlocked.

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