Max Kaiser has a bombshell - is JP Morgan literally smoked if silver rises above its share price ? If yes , the gap between the two is closing rapidly and if this is an issues maybe we find out if Max is on point shortly.....JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon in focus - is Jamie getting set up to take a big fall ?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/so-how-are-jpms-prop-counterparties-faring

So How Are JPM's Prop "Counterparties" Faring?

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/17/2012 20:49 -0400

• Convexity
 
• Counterparties
 
• Negative Convexity
• None

We already know that JPM has lost billions on its prop trade, and as suggested earlier(and as the FT picked up subsequently), JPM's prop desk (not to mention its actual standalone hedge fund, $29 billion Highbridge, which nobody has oddly enough discussed in the mainstream press yet) is so large that unwinding the full trade, as well as all other positions held by the CIO, would be unwieldy, allowing us to mock "the fun of negative convexity -especially when you ARE the market and there is no-one to unwind the actual tranches to." The FT then phrased it as follows: "I can’t see how they could unwind these positions because no one can replace them in terms of size. It’s a bit of the same problem they face with the derivatives trade," said a credit trader at a rival bank. "They pretty much are the market." Which actually is funny, because if the media were to actually read a paper or two on how the market works, and puts two and two together, it just may figure out that the biggest beneficial counterparty for JPM is none other than the Fed, using the conduits of the Tri-Party repo system. But that is forLong-Term Capital Morgan^TM and its new CIO head Matt "LTCM" Zames to worry about. In the meantime, a question nobody has asked is how have the purported JPM counterparties, the most public of which areBlueMountain and BlueCrest who leaked the trade to the press in the first place, and are allegedly on the other side of the IG9 blow up doing. Well, according to the latest HSBC hedge fund update looking at the week ended May 11, not that hot.

Now one thing we know is that when it comes to reporting one's results to an aggregator: when you have a profit you never under-represent it. And in this special case, since the funds are likely eager to recruit more like-minded hedge funds to their side of the trade, the best way to do it is by showing profits.

Which, for the early part of May, when the bulk of the JPM losses took place, are oddly missing for the two biggest players across from JPM...

So: where are the profits really going?

And is there much more here than the "access journalism" press has been let on to know?


and an answer to the question posed - are the losses related to what Max Kaiser has alleged .....

The Death Cross: JPM’s stock price poised to cross below price of silver.

Posted on May 11, 2012 by maxkeiser| 22 Comments

As we’ve been saying for two years. JPM uses it’s own stock to collateralize naked silver short positions (echoes of Lehman and Enron). My analysis has concluded that liability from a rising silver price vs. loss of collateral value of the stock renders JPM’s balance sheet null and void when JPM’s stock price drops below the price of Silver. We’ve only seen this a couple of times since I made this call two years ago, BUT NEVER ON A SUSTAINED BASIS of more than a day or so. When the price of Silver popped over JPM’s stock price, the London desk quickly fabricated a few billion fresh naked silver shorts to tamp silver’s price down. Given this week’s revelations regarding JPM’s reckless balance sheet incineration the ‘crash jp morgan, buy silver’ trade has never been more important as a way to take down this financial terrorist. The SLA has been winning battles all along. Now we are poised to win the war as well. Bye-bye Jamie. NOTE TO HEDGE FUNDS: Sell JPM’s stock naked to Hell. This is the easiest money you’ll make this year.

The JPM losses are the whiff of a significant deflationary force in play. JPM losses as a wise PM told me – $2 billion why not $20 billion. Is this bad risk management? This loss happened in the risk mitigation unit and not a risk taking one. There have been dislocations in the credit market these last few months and now we know why.

Is it that the derivatives risk is becoming more and more centered with a few banks, and collateral is just not forthcoming because the collateral has been promised many times over? As we move towards central clearing of these contracts will we see legal reconstitution of said contracts to obfuscate the reality that they are worthless. They are being exposed for the sticks of dynamite, under the foundations of the financial system, that they are.

and the speculation of a 100 billion unhedged CDS maybe having some legs - because if it was hedged , wouldn't JP Morgan say so immediately .... .....



http://finance.yahoo.com/news/jpmorgan-unit-100-billion-securitized-012000729.html

(Reuters) - The unit at the center of JPMorgan Chase & Co's (NYS:JPM - News) recently revealed $2 billion trading loss has built up more than $100 billion in positions in asset-backed securities and structured products, the Financial Times said on Thursday.

The newspaper said this portfolio comprises the "complex, risky bonds at the centre of the financial crisis in 2008", but did not say whether any of the holdings are in unhedged positions.

It said the portfolio is separate from holdings in credit derivatives that led to the trading loss by JPMorgan's chief investment office, which has sparked much criticism of the largest U.S. bank and its chief executive, Jamie Dimon.

JPMorgan spokeswoman Kristin Lemkau declined immediate comment.

The chief investment office has been the biggest buyer of European mortgage-backed bonds and other complex debt securities such as collateralized loan obligations in all markets for three years, the newspaper said, citing more than a dozen senior traders and credit experts.

That office's "non-vanilla" portfolio has grown to more than $150 billion, the newspaper said, without citing sources or providing details of the holdings.

Earlier Thursday, JPMorgan said Dimon had agreed to testify before the Senate Banking Committee to discuss the trading loss. The testimony would follow hearings on implementing Wall Street reforms that are expected to end on June 6.

JPMorgan shares closed Thursday down $1.53, or 4.3 percent, at $33.93 on Thursday. Shares of the New York-based bank have fallen 16.7 percent in the five trading days since the loss was revealed.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/its-not-over-yet-jpm

It's Not Over Yet For JPM

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/17/2012 17:35 -0400

• Convexity
 
• Negative Convexity
 
• Risk Management

IG9 10Y spreads re-surged today and were very choppy into the close as they broke back above 155bps (at 155.5/157.5bps now) for the first time since Mid-December with a 31% rip in the last two weeks. This fits perfectly with our ongoing thesis of this being a tail-risk hedge (not a simple 'spread' as other ignorant commentators presume) whose risk management has exploded in their face. While the skew (the difference between the index and its portfolio fair-value) has collapsed and arbs will be happy and likely exiting - the same correlation shifts (thatwe discussed earlier) that drove the big bank to sell more and more protection into a spread compressing market are now back-firing as systemic risk re-surges and the correlation shift is forcing them to buy back more and more protection into a spread decompressing market. Oh the fun of negative convexity - especially when you ARE the market and there is no-one to unwind the actual tranches to.

While we among others expected the selling to slow as the skew collapsed, the secondary effect of the actual rise in systemic risk is now taking over and forces the bank to buy protection back into a rising spread market...

but the velocity of the change is incredible...

and.....

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/jamie-dimon-invited-testify-senate

Jamie Dimon "Invited" To Testify Before Senate

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/17/2012 15:18 -0400

• Commodity Futures Trading Commission
 
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
 
• Federal Reserve
 
• Jamie Dimon
 
• JPMorgan Chase
 
• Pair Trades
 
• Prop Trading
• Treasury Department

Update: JPMORGAN SAYS DIMON TO AGREE TO TESTIFY TO SENATE. Ummmm, there was an option?

As everyone (or at least Zero Hedge) long expected, JPM's prop trading debacle just got political and senators are about to demonstrate to the world just how little they understand about modern IG9-tranche pair trades. Expect to hear much more about JPM's "shitty" prop deal.

From the Senate Banking Committee:

CHAIRMAN JOHNSON TO INVITE JPMORGAN CHASE’S JAMIE DIMON TO TESTIFY

WASHINGTON -- Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD), Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, released the following statement regarding the Committee’s upcoming oversight hearings.

"Earlier this week, I announced the Senate Banking Committee would continue its oversight of the implementation of Wall Street reform by holding additional hearings with key financial regulators. The first of these hearings will be held next Tuesday, May 22 and it will provide Banking Committee members the opportunity to hear from the SEC and CFTC. The second hearing will be held on Wednesday, June 6 with the Federal Reserve, FDIC, CFPB, and OCC as well as the Treasury Department. As part of these hearings, I have asked the appropriate regulators to be prepared to update the Committee on the recently reported trading loss by JPMorgan Chase.

“Over the past week, my staff and Ranking Member Shelby’s staff have jointly held briefings with regulators regarding the JPMorgan Chase trading loss, as well a briefing with the company itself. Our due diligence has made it clear that the Banking Committee should hear directly from JPMorgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon, and following our two Wall Street reform oversight hearings I plan to invite him to testify. I encourage all of my colleagues on the Banking Committee to participate in these three critically important and timely hearings, so we can all better understand the facts.”

and Jamie needs to be very careful when he testifies - he has a choice between perhaps lying to Congress or truly exposing himself under Sarbanes - Oxley ......

THURSDAY, MAY 17, 2012

Michael Crimmins: Why the Cops Should be Knocking on Jamie Dimon’s Door Soon

By Michael Crimmins, who has worked on risk management and Sarbanes Oxley compliance for major banks

The scandal surrounding JP Morgan’s losses in its Chief Investment Office is not going away, and for good reason. Its trading book continues to lose money at an astounding rate. The most recent report estimates that the losses have increased by at least 50% more than the bank’s original loss estimates. The total damage is anyone’s guess at this point.

This fiasco is beginning to look a lot like accounting control fraud. The Justice Department and the FBI have begun criminal probes. The SEC is also investigating. So far, the objectives of these investigations are under wraps, but if I were an SEC or DOJ enforcement official I’d be laser-focused on bringing a Sarbanes-Oxley case against Jamie Dimon.

Sarbanes-Oxley emerged out of the Enron frauds. This law requires the CEO to certify that internal controls are operating effectively to give comfort to readers of the financial statements that the disclosures contained in the reporting are reliable. There are civil penalties for filing a false certification and criminal penalties, including jail time, for false filings found to be fraudulent. So far none of the obvious candidates like Dick Fuld at Lehman or Jon Corzine at MF Global have been prosecuted under the law.

Jamie Dimon looks like a very attractive candidate to investigate for SOX violations.

For starters, Dimon’s description of what happened rings SOX alarm bells:

First of all, there was one warning signal — if you look back from today, there were other red flags. That particular red flag — you know, we made a mistake, we got very defensive and people started justifying everything we did. You know, the benefit in life is to say, ‘Maybe you made a mistake, let’s dig deep.’ And the mistake had been brewing for a while, so it wasn’t just any one thing.

- Meet the Press, May 13, 2012

Warning signs and red flags were ignored. And they’ve apparently been ignored since 2007. Once again, echoing what happened at MF Global, risk managers who raised alarms about the riskiness of the positions in 2009 were replaced with more cooperative risk managers:

Several bankers said that risk controls were not sufficiently strengthened by Doug Braunstein, who took over as chief financial officer in 2010, another reason the bolder trades continued.

This indicates the firm was aware of deficiencies in the controls if other executives knew Braunstein had a mandate to improve them. These concerns are probably documented in the meeting minutes of the management committees responsible for risk, financial reporting and SOX compliance. It shouldn’t be difficult for the SEC to review these sources to determine who knew what and when about the state of the internal control environment.

JPM has issued quite a few financial statements since 2007 and 2009. If the controls and riskiness of the trades were as alarming and deficient as the managers indicate, then the reliability of the financial statements for the last 5 years are questionable. For a portfolio of this size and importance it’s inconceivable that the controls and risk issues were not reported up the management chain.

More damning is Dimon’s tacit admission that the controls designed to protect the firm from these sorts of blowups were ineffective, due to lack of intervention. Ignoring internal controls, or red flags as Dimon characterizes them, is a failure in the control environment. The failure to disclose inoperative key controls in the CEO certification is a violation the law.

That’s the big picture case. Recent reporting about the trade itself point to other areas that should be investigated for Sox violations.

When is a Hedge not a Hedge?

It appears that the JPM portfolio ‘hedge’ isn’t a hedge at all, at least according to current accounting standards. As Dina Dublon, CFO of JP Morgan Chase from 1998 to 2004, explained:

Dublon also pointed out that JP Morgan’s $200 billion mistake was not an accounting loss. “There is a difference between accounting and economic valuations,” she said. “You have a mark-to-market hedge against an accrual exposure that is not being marked to market. So you can have a gain or loss on the hedge, but you will not recognize the change in value of the loan portfolio, which is on an accrual accounting basis.

Translating this into non accountant language, JPM had a portfolio of assets which are available for sale. The change in the value of those securities is tracked, but since they aren’t considered to be trading assets, the change in value doesn’t hit the bottom line until they are sold. By contrast, positions held in trading books are “marked to market,” meaning they are revalued as market prices change and the resulting gains or losses are reported on an ongoing basis.

JPM reported that this portfolio contains significant unrealized gains. Indeed, it realized some of those gains to offset the losses on the portfolio ‘hedge’.

To hedge this portfolio JPM bought and sold credit default swaps. This portfolio ‘hedge’ is accounted for on a mark to market basis. This is odd since a true hedge should get the same accounting treatment as the asset it’s hedging. This indicates that the ‘hedge’ failed the hedge effectiveness test required by the accounting rules that would qualify it for hedge accounting treatment. More precisely the correlation between the hedge and the underlying isn’t strong enough to qualify it as a hedge.

Further confirmation that the ‘hedge’ wasn’t technically a hedge comes from Jamie Dimon himself.

In hindsight, the new strategy was flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored. The portfolio has proven to be riskier, more volatile and less effective an economic hedge than we thought.

As Dublon explained above, “There is a difference between accounting and economic valuations.” Dimon takes care to refer to the ‘economic hedge’, which is a term of art. It has no significance for financial disclosure purposes. It means whatever the user wants it to mean. If Dimon has not been vigilant in using the phrase ‘economic hedge’ in his disclosures and public comments about this portfolio then he’s made some false disclosures.

An “economic hedge’ is not a ‘hedge’ for financial disclosure purposes. ‘Economic hedge’ is a meaningless phrase. The abbreviated term ‘hedge’ when used to describe the trading portfolio embedded in the CIO book is a false characterization of the portfolio. He should not be permitted to describe this as a hedge in any of his comments about this book. At a minimum, he should be called on it every time he utters the phrase.

If It’s Not a Hedge Then What is It?

To recap, JPM owns a portfolio of securities it is ‘economically hedging” with a portfolio of credit default swaps. The purpose of a hedge is to reduce the risk of adverse price moves on the underlying portfolio.
The CDS portfolio consists of CDS purchased and CDS sold.

CDS purchased for the portfolio may have been put on as a hedge against the “available for sale” portfolio. But the CDS sold as a hedge doesn’t seem to make any sense. Selling CDS is equivalent to increasing the exposure to the underlying credits. The CDS sold don’t seem to have a risk mitigating role as part of a hedge, but to date JPM hasn’t provided the information to evaluate the overall portfolio.

It’s possible JPM was funding the CDS purchases by selling longer dated CDS and justifying the inclusion of the CDS sales as funding of the hedging purchases, but that would seem to be pretty expansive definition of a hedge. Perhaps ‘economic hedging’ as JPM defines it includes the funding sources of the combined ‘economic hedge’. That seems ridiculous but the term is open to any interpretation.

Since the combined CDS portfolio is accounted for on a mark to market basis, the position may not have raised any red flags with readers of the financial statements as long as it was in the money. That appears to have been the case for an extended period, as evidenced by the enormous pay packages (over $100 million for the chief trader, the infamous Whale, if reports are to be believed) for the CIO desk. You don’t pay that kind of money to hedgers.

But the position has cratered this year and JPM was forced to disclose the losses on the CDS portfolio. To offset those losses JPM sold off some of its AFS portfolio. We’re still waiting for a precise definition of economic hedge from JPM.

This characterization raises additional alarms, since it appears that JPM effectively viewed the AFS/CDS portfolio combination as a net trading position. Normally, you wouldn’t sell your AFS portfolio (or enjoy the beneficial accounting treatment) unless there was an extraordinary exogenous event that caused you to liquidate the portfolio. Trading losses on a portfolio jointly managed as part of the AFS portfolio wouldn’t qualify.

This raises the question of whether JPM has correctly classified the available for sale assets since they acquired them. That’s a serious issue. If JPM misclassified a $200B position for years, it should be investigated for a host of regulatory violations and fraud.

For all intents and purposes the hedge portfolio is a separate trading book, and the financial reporting reflects that fact. There should be no way JPM should be able to spin this as a hedge of anything and deny the proprietary trading characterization the accounting treatment signifies.

What’s up With the Value at Risk?

Another area the SEC needs to investigate is the curious restatement of the VaR, which is a measure of risk used in disclosures to investors and regulatory reviews.

As discussed above, the risk exposure of the marked to market positions (the hedge porfolio) must be disclosed in the financial statements. JPM recently replaced the VaR model for this portfolio. It appears that the new model significantly understated the risk exposure and the bank has hastily reverted to an “older” model. One benefit of a reduced risk exposure is a reduction in capital held against the portfolio. Under the new model JPM would only have been required to hold half as much capital on the portfolio, than it did under the original model

It is extremely unusual that a risk model for such a critical portfolio isn’t exhaustively vetted both internally and by the regulators before it was permitted to be installed. There was clearly a breakdown in the controls around that model replacement. This breakdown resulted in a significant and material underreporting of risk in the initial 1Q 2012 SEC reporting. The restatement validates that a material breakdown in internal controls existed before the model was implemented.

It also raises other questions. Blaming models for management failures has become a fairly standard first response during the financial crisis. When HSBC took their first big hit on their securitization business in the 2007 (for fiscal year 2006), and shut down their US securitization business, they attributed the losses to the discovery that their credit risk models were flawed. I have no doubt this was true, but the discovery of the flawed model also coincided with the beginning of the collapse of the RMBS market.

The revelation by JPM in the days immediately following the reports of the Whale’s trade, that the new VAR model seriously underestimated the riskiness of the portfolio, is more significant to a SOX investigation around adequacy of controls than an investigation into the adequacy of the model itself for risk management purposes.

This sort of “whoops our models understated risk” is a convenient way to shift blame off management to “model error” for a decision to take on additional risk. Given that easy profits in banking are vanishing, which are we to believe: that JPM, heretofore seen as a leader in the CDS marker, suddenly became grossly incompetent? Or did they decide to take on more risk and implement models that would mask from regulators and the public the scale of the wagers they were taking?

It also raises concerns about other models use for these portfolios. Many of the underlying assets in the portfolio are illiquid and complex securities. The models used for pricing these instruments and reporting valuations deserve additional scrutiny at this point as well.

It doesn’t look like JP Morgan made a bunch of egregious mistakes. It looks like they broke the law, at least the Sarbanes-Oxley law.