One of the telltale signs of an asset price bubble is high margin debt among institutional and retail investors. Check. FINRA reported that margin debt provided by broker-dealers hit $1.3 trillion for the first time…

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, and noted that one of the explanations is stagnant inflation-adjusted income (link)….

I wrote last week about consumer spending patterns and to a lesser extent about the U.S. Treasury’s increasingly heavy reliance on short-term bill issuance to fund its massive budget deficits. Now back to the banks,…

Greg Ip of The Wall Street Journal wrote a column last evening titled “AI Is Distorting Practically Everything About the Economy,” and indeed it is (link). He noted that consumer spending is growing at a…

The U.S. Treasury said this morning that it anticipates keeping nominal note and bond sale sizes unchanged for at least the next several quarters, meaning it’ll continue to issue the shortest-dated debt (bills) to fund…

I’m back from a brief hiatus. 1Q earnings season has been largely as expected with housing, consumer and packaging companies reporting weak sales while many industrial companies have reported a surge in orders for the…

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…