The Reverse Lurch

No, that’s not the patent-pending description of Tiger’s new putting stroke.

In my post of May 31, 2010: “A Lurch to the Left”, I commented on the fact that pricing of TRE auctions had taken a decided turn in favor of the Buyer-community.

Auction statistics over the six-week period prior to that post reflected a shift in pricing power away from the Sellers.

I also noted, though, that there had been periods when the balance of power had favored the Sellers and that it was reasonable to expect that TRE pricing dynamics would shift from time to time.

The shifts from Seller-power to Buyer-power and vice-versa can obviously reflect a variety of factors. New Buyers with a desire to put money to work quickly can push pricing down. A sudden increase in supply of auctions can have the reverse effect.

We’re also beginning to see some cyclical patterns reflecting the lumpy timing of invoice payments and the desire to quickly redeploy returned capital.

The” Reverse Lurch” I’m referring to now is a decided shift back toward the Sellers’ favor in auction pricing.

That’s been noticeable over the past few weeks but has been especially pronounced in just the past several trading sessions.

My guess is that one or more Buyers have either just begun to deploy capital on the Exchange or have significantly increased their allocations to Exchange activity.

Whatever the cause, the effect has been clear.

In the first three trading sessions in September I bid on a number of auctions at prices that would have had a high probability of acceptance a week or two ago. In several cases those auctions were bought by others very quickly at prices that reflected no desire to test the pricing possibilities.

By that I mean the Buyer accepted the “buy out” pricing parameters with no attempt to determine if a better deal might be available. In a number of cases there were other bids; some quite far away from the “buy out”; and the winning bidder jumped immediately to buy-out price level.

The character of the Exchange is such that none of us can really tell what motivations are at play in any given auction or at any given time. We can only observe what IS happening and speculate about patterns that emerge as we look back at what HAS happened.

Since the bidding of the first three days of September presented some unusual activity I decided to look back about six weeks to see what I might find.

I looked at four auctions that closed in the first three days of September. The Sellers were “regulars”. The Debtors had a good deal of payment history. So reasonable projections of duration could be made both for the new auctions and those that closed in late July. The sizes of the early September and the late July auctions were similar.

I plugged the parameters of the auctions into a model that estimates annualized net return.

The projected annualized net return from those four sample auctions averaged roughly HALF the levels those Sellers had to pay in the late July period for similar auctions of invoices due from the same Account Debtors.

That’s a MAJOR lurch!

Now, the AVERAGE auction has NOT fallen in yield in that way over the past six weeks. The pricing pressure is not indiscriminate. And it might well be that this shift is short-term and motivated by unusual Buyer dynamics.

The point of this post is to recall the reverse situation in late May and to point out that pricing DOES ebb and flow on TRE. My guess is that the magnitude of the swings will become less pronounced as the volume of Exchange transactions continues to increase.

One thing is clear: these “lurches” tend to be concentrated in auctions that might seem a bit “obvious”: meaning, for example, that the Debtor is a very well-known name.

There are still very good, if less-obvious, auctions to be had at better pricing levels.

And we should remember that it’s not clear that the “obvious” auctions necessarily deserve the pricing they receive.

There are three elements to analyze in any auction:

a) the capacity of the Seller to re-purchase if necessary,

b) the capacity of the Debtor to pay what it owes, and

c) the character and certainty of the rights and obligations connecting them.

A triple-A Debtor might appear to create an obvious “buy”.

But a triple-A Debtor that questions the obligation to pay can all of a sudden become the hardest collection case on the list.

Then it’s the Seller’s capacity to re-purchase that is the key issue in the analysis.

I'm not a golfer but I know enough to realize that a "lurch" is not a good thing in a putting stroke. But apparently it DOES happen from time to time; even to the best.

Tomorrow's another day!