June 3rd, 2005, 1:19 am
Know how mortgages work: fixed rate, hybrid, ARM, etc. Know the reasons why homeowners prepay their loans. Understand how the borrower's right to prepay means that an MBS has negative convexity. Be able to explain how you can make money by delta hedging a negatively convex position. Know the big sectors in the MBS market: agency pass-throughs, CMOs (both agency and non-agency), derivatives (inverse floaters, IO, PO). Know the terminology: average life, WAC, WAM, WALA, OAS. You can find all this stuff in the first few chapters of Fabozzi's 800-page handbook of MBS, available online and in most Barnes and Noble stores.