Large U.S. banks have characterized consumer spending as “solid” (in the words of Bank of America) and “healthy” (JPMorgan Chase) when reporting their 1Q results this week. Their stance on their private credit exposure is…

As I wrote yesterday (link), the theme among large U.S. banks that reported their 1Q results has been the same as in previous quarters/years: booming markets/trading-related businesses, with Main Street businesses (consumer and business lending)…

Wells Fargo missed consensus estimates on its net interest income (NII) in 1Q and expects additional net interest margin (NIM) compression in 2Q, mainly because its repo and other markets-related loans are growing rapidly, which…

In a likely sign of things to come in 1Q paper & packaging earnings season, the Canadian packaging and tissue company Cascades, whose sales are roughly evenly split between the U.S. and Canada, negatively preannounced…

The Financial Times ran a story last week on the boom in secondary transactions/secondaries (link), which have become increasingly popular as private equity (PE)/buyout firms have struggled to sell their portfolio companies. They’re likely to…

I’ve written about the ongoing struggles of all manner of consumer-related companies aside from those that cater mainly or exclusively to the rich (link), and noted that one of the explanations is stagnant inflation-adjusted income…

I’ve written extensively about the chronic sales weakness among a wide range of consumer-related companies, and that weakness predated the Iran war. Just last week, Nike and RH guided to current quarter sales well below…

The latest in a long line of bombshells pertaining to the private credit industry occurred last week when Blue Owl disclosed that investors wanted to redeem more than 20% of shares from its $36 billion…

I wrote yesterday about the numerous problems that consumer staples companies and other consumer-related companies are having (link). Today brought plenty more of the same. McCormick: Reported its lowest organic sales growth rate (1.2%) since…

My last note was about the chronic weakness in U.S. discretionary spending over the past two years owing to several factors including the cumulative effects of high inflation, lack of real income growth post-pandemic, sharp…

My sense from having recently spoken to a sample of U.S. box industry participants is that demand/volume trends didn’t get noticeably worse in March despite the dramatic rise in gasoline and diesel prices and its…

I wrote in recent days (link) about record-high financial leverage, with large banks and their affiliated broker-dealers lending an enormous amount of money to hedge funds via repo to finance asset price speculation including the…

There’s been a great deal of attention on the private credit and business development company (BDC) industry of late for all the wrong reasons, among them rising withdrawal requests, capped withdrawals, falling net asset values,…

I published a note last week on bank-enabled financial leverage, which is at record highs in many cases and which has been growing by the month even as the Federal Reserve noted in its most…

I recently hosted a call with several privately held U.S. boxmakers, whose perspective often differs from that of the publicly traded containerboard producers. Among the topics discussed were (1) the impact or lack thereof of…