The Company will target investments in mortgage pass-through certificates and CMOs for which the principal and interest payments are guaranteed by a U.S. Government agency or a federally chartered corporation.
Single-family residential mortgage pass-through certificates are securities representing interests in “pools” of mortgage loans secured by residential real property where payments of both interest and principal, plus pre-paid principal, on the securities are made monthly to holders of the securities, in effect “passing through” monthly payments made by the individual borrowers on the mortgage loans that underlie the securities, net of fees paid to the issuer/guarantor and servicers of the securities.
CMOs are securities which are structured from U.S. Government agency or federally chartered corporation-backed mortgage pass-through certificates. CMOs receive monthly payments of principal and interest. CMOs divide the cash flows which come from the underlying mortgage pass-through certificates into different classes of securities. CMOs can have different maturities and different weighted average lives than the underlying mortgage pass-through certificates.
The types of Agency MBS described above are collateralized by either fixed-rate mortgage loans, or FRMs, adjustable-rate mortgage loans, or ARMs, or hybrid ARMs. Hybrid ARMs are mortgage loans that have interest rates that are fixed for an initial period (typically three, five, seven or 10 years) and thereafter reset at regular intervals subject to interest rate caps.
The Company’s allocation between securities collateralized by FRMs, ARMs or hybrid ARMs will depend on various factors including, but not limited to, relative value, expected future prepayment trends, supply and demand, costs of hedging, costs of financing, expected future interest rate volatility and the overall shape of the U.S. Treasury and interest rate swap yield curves. The Company intends to take these factors into account when it makes investments in various types of Agency MBS.
In the future the Company may also invest in debentures that are issued and guaranteed by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae or mortgage-backed securities the collateral of which is guaranteed by Ginnie Mae, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae or another federally chartered corporation.