Meanwhile, The “Next Big Short” Is Quietly Blowing Up

Back in March, when we detailed the ongoing catastrophic deterioration in the US retail sector, manifesting itself in empty malls, mass store closures, soaring layoffs and growing bankruptcies – demonstrated most vividly by the overnight bankruptcy of Toys “R” Us, the second largest retail bankruptcy in US history after K-Mart – we said that “just like 10 years ago, when the “big short” was putting on the RMBX trade, and to a smaller extent, its cousin the CMBX, so now too some are starting to short CMBS through the CMBX, a CDS index which tracks the values of bonds backed by various commercial properties. They are betting against securities backed by malls in weaker locations where stores could close in quick succession, triggering debt defaults.”
We dubbed this retail short via CMBX the next “Big Short” trade, and others promptly followed.
In a subsequent post just a few days later, we underscored why the correct way to short the great retail collapse was not so much through stocks, but CMBX:
The trade, as we discussed before, is not so much shorting the equities where a persistent threat of a short squeeze has burned the bears on more than one occasion, but going long default risk via CMBX or otherwise shorting the CMBS complex. Based on fundamentals, the trade indeed appears justified: Sold in 2012, the mortgage bonds have a higher concentration of loans to regional malls and shopping centers than similar securities issued since the financial crisis. And because of the way CMBS are structured, the BBB- and BB rated notes are the first to suffer losses when underlying loans go belly up.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Sep 19, 2017.