The Institutional Risk Analyst

Truth is, it’s hard to see the leadership of either RITM or UWMC combining with another entity, but the cost pressures in the industry today are driving radical change. 

The connection between expanding the balance sheet via open market purchases of Treasury debt and bank reserves is one of the starkest illustrations of how federal budget deficits translate directly into inflation.

The intriguing thing about private coin empires is that they are obviously not a positive for existing payment systems, yet neither are they dependent upon crypto. Larger sponsors may be able to create exclusive coin ecosystems without actually touching crypto assets at all. Fiat to AMZN coin, “ZON,” is really all that the sponsor needs.

Researchers at Apple just released a paper that throws cold water on the "reasoning" capabilities of the latest, most powerful large language AI models. In the paper, a team of machine learning experts makes the case that the AI industry is grossly overstating the ability of its top AI models, including OpenAI's o3, Anthropic's Claude 3.7, and Google's Gemini.

The proliferation of low- or no-cost coin systems is ultimately negative for established players in nonbank finance and payments, including the major card issuers, as we discuss below.  Still worried about interchange fees?

When Ray Dalio says to be afraid of the bond market, he is asking a question that belongs in the mid-1970s, when the dollar still competed with other currencies and US interest rates were actually affected by interest rates in other nations. But today, with many of the other industrial nations led by Japan, China and the EU literally drowning in public debt, the US is still the leader of the parade.

As of yesterday's close, BK was right behind SoFi Technology (SOFI) leading the bank surveillance group higher. BK closed yesterday at 14x forward earnings and 1.6x book value, roughly the same PE multiple as JPM but at a lower book value multiple.

“Our operative assumption is that the strong economy and continued high inflation expectations will mitigate against any interest rate cuts in 2025,” Whalen notes. “We expect to see the FOMC end the shrinkage of the central bank’s balance sheet, which should help to increase the very low growth rates for bank deposits.”

Even a small decrease in prepayments due to higher LT interest rates could significantly impact the fair value of the Bank of America mortgage portfolio, forcing unrealized losses higher. If LT rates continue to rise, one veteran banker told The IRA yesterday, then BAC and several other large banks are going to start to literally shake apart from unrealized losses on COVID era assets.

We expect to see continued consolidation in the world of residential mortgage finance in coming months. The sad fact is that many less competitive businesses in mortgage finance have been waiting for the FOMC to ride to the rescue with lower interest rates. If rate cuts do not materialize in 2025, however, then many of these businesses may not survive.

The common penny stocks of these two appendages of the state, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are up over 600% in the past year, generating huge gains for the likes of Bill Ackman and John Paulson. Bitcoin is up a paltry 50% LTM. Indeed, much like old fintech stocks such as PayPal (PYPL) and Block Inc (XTZ), bitcoin seems to be losing the special novelty that always seems to drive these manic stories. Is bitcoin now just another boring Wall Street ETF?

“The boards of the GSEs don’t have a fiduciary duty to the Enterprises,” Pulte noted. “They have a fiduciary duty to the conservatorship.”

So yes, we think that every major bank is going to be integrating crypto at some point. Like I said, we think it’s a technology to update the financial system. And we’ve had conversations with a number of them.

When you buy a crypto currency, you buy an option on finding a greater fool, but nothing more, a transaction that would have provoked contempt in Lincoln’s day.

The Fed's actions in 2008 and again in March 2020 were largely driven by the sole mandate of the central bank -- to keep the Treasury market opening and functioning.

At one point last year, HOOD was up several hundred percent, but has given back much of those gains. Yet the leaders of our finance group have outperformed the broad market.

While GHLD provides a lot of good information about their business, the investor disclosure provided by UWMC is a bad joke, especially when you remember that UWMC is the largest nonbank lender in the US. The Q1 2025 press release is just 9 pages in length and lacks some of the most basic financial information available from UWMC’s peers.

Central banks have changed their posture from net sellers of gold to net buyers. Central banks are not price sensitive regarding gold, they are sensitive to volume and tonnage of available gold.

TD was up about 6% over the past three months, the only name in our test group with a positive three-month market return, of note.

The overall loss rate for the SOFI credit book is very low and the overall net loss rate reported in the Form Y-9 is also low, as shown in the chart above. But the levels of net loss on the bank's unsecured consumer loan book are eye-opening. As and when credit costs actually start to rise among US banks, the unsecured consumer book of SOFI may become a larger concern.