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Category: General News

Website Down

As no doubt many readers noticed the website was down for a long period of time today–not sure how long, but at least 7 hours–I first noticed it at noon today.

Apparently there was a problem with an ‘array’ on the server and the website had to be migrated to a new server. What does that mean?? Hell if I know–to me it was just broke and now they have it fixed.

Sortable Spreadsheet – All $25/Share Issues

Below you can find instructions for the sortable $25 master list (baby bonds and preferreds stocks)–finally after months of being too busy to get this updated I have all but a few issues now included–I hope to get the last few added within a week.

If you already ‘know the ropes’ on this spreadsheet you can go right to the spreadsheet here.

Version 1—12/16/2019

Version 2 —2/15/2020

Version 3—3/4/2020

Version 4–7/29/2020

NOTE THAT NEW VERSIONS HAVE CALLED ISSUES REMOVED AND NEW ISSUES ADDED

UNTIL THE NEXT VERSION IS RELEASED (60-90 DAYS) NEW ISSUES ARE NOT ADDED UNLESS YOU DO IT ON THE COPY YOU MAKE

Please NOTE that this will not work with EXCEL only Google Sheets.

  1. You need a Google Account to use this sheet correctly. Go here to set up an account if you do not have one. While an account gives you gmail and other apps it importantly gives you an account for accessing and using Google Sheets.
  2. After creating an account with Google make sure you are signed in.
  3. Go the the sortable spreadsheet which you can find here.
  4. Once you open the spreadsheet as long as you are logged into your Google account the spreadsheet will automatically be in your spreadsheet list.
  5. You will see that when you open the spreadsheet it will say ‘view only’.
  6. Make a copy of the sheet for yourself–go to File, Make a Copy then give it the name you want.
  7. You will now be able to use own copy to sort etc.

Note that there are 3 sheets to the spreadsheet–I have hidden 2 which are not needed by you unless you wish to make changes. The tab you need is labeled “Filter”.

Unless you are very well versed in Google Sheets I would suggest not modifying the other 2 pages–BUT if you are like me and just can’t help yourself you can always come back here if you ‘break’ the sheet.

Articles of Note

There are a few articles of note worth reading.

Reuters published a story on a bail out for mortgage servicers.

Supposed billionaire Tilman Fertitta is offering 15% for a term loan. You can be sure that this is going to be a common theme in the months ahead–we all know how leveraged these companies have been–and any disruption would cause problems–certainly the mother of all disruptions will bankrupt many.

Does Your Fixed To Floating Rate Security Have a Libor Floor?

A few of our astute readers (sorry lost track of who these folks were) commented recently that baby bonds of the First Internet Bancorp (INBK) have a clause in the floating rate reset determination section of the prospectus that states the following–

The key part is the last sentence which reads ‘if the benchmark rate is less than zero, then the benchmark rate will be deemed to be zero’.

While I don’t expect that we will see a zero 3 month Libor rate anytime soon, I also didn’t think we would see a 10 year treasury under 1%.

What this means is that if 3 month Libor went negative you would have a ‘floor’ coupon of the spread used to set the coupon rate. For instance the First Internet Bancorp 6.0% baby bond (INBKL) has a spread of 4.85% which will be added to 3 month Libor. Thus 4.85% will be the lowest coupon this floating rate issue would be reset at.

I did some random looks at other mREIT issues and did not find the language that set the 3 month Lior floor at zero.

This is likely not a big deal–BUT you may want to know if you have a floor on your floating rate issue–the details are in the prospectus of each issue.