“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” - Albert E
Read MoreYesterday I spoke at a luncheon (many thanks to MAGNY for a great event) where, during Q&A, a number of people commented on how difficult it is for those who grew up doing corporate bonds to try to cross over into muni-land’s veritable Oz. With all the talking trees and flying monkeys, munis can be pretty disorienting. And I’ve seen it happen many times myself; graveyards are indeed littered with the corpses of corporate types who come to munis and just never get it, both on the buy-side and the banker/sell-side. They show up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed talking about “benchmark this” and “OAS that” but ultimately wind up crouched in a corner mumbling something about 5 and 10 year bullets.
“I have two ways of learning from history: from the past, by reading the elders; and from the future, thanks to my Monte Carlo toy.”
- Nassim Taleb, Fooled by Randomness