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Silicon Valley and the Large Bank Dead Pool
When you see a bank with more than 10% of total assets in MBS, that's a big red flag in our book.
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Mar 97 min read


WGA Releases Q1 2025 Bank Industry Survey | Higher for Longer May Throttle Deposit Growth
Industry results in 2024 were reasonably good, but the banking industry is still 200 bp below 2019 levels of asset and equity returns
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Feb 282 min read


Logan Riffs on SOMA; XYZ and SYF Say No Recession Yet
Like 2023 and 2024, the year 2025 may end up being relatively stable, yet investors remain worried about stealth externalities.
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Feb 258 min read


HOOD: Is the Bloom off the Rose?
And just why do financial firms like HOOD, SoFi Technologies (SOFI) and Block (XYZ) talk about EBITDA in their investor materials?
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Feb 134 min read


Trump Attacks the Administrative State
Folks in the financial sector are beginning to wonder if certain parts of the government apparatus will continue to function.
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Feb 96 min read


The Bottom Quartile: FLG, KEY, LOB & TCBI
A look at the bottom quarter of WGA Bank Top 100 Index. We view TCBI as a work in progress. But kudos to KEY...
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Feb 67 min read


Is Ameriprise Overvalued? Is PennyMac Cheap vs the REITs?
We think it is notable that AMP has underperformed the other members of the group other than SCHW over the past year.
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Feb 37 min read


WGA Bank Top 100 Index | Q1 2025
GS had not appeared in the top 25 since we began the indices a year ago, while MS had made it three times.
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Jan 294 min read


Credit Teeters as President Trump Roars
When President Donald Trump says that interest rates are too high, he may not fully understand just how right he is about the cost of credit
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Jan 276 min read


Update: Charles Schwab | SCHW
The SVB duration management from 2020 onward was recklessly negligent by any reasonable standard
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Jan 225 min read


GSE Release? Really. What Do JPM and BAC Say About 2025 Earnings?
Without profits from commissions and capital markets, BAC would have reported a down quarter due to higher funding and operating expenses.
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Jan 166 min read


Big Losses in Commercial Real Estate & PE in 2025?
Private equity portfolio companies are about 10 times as likely to go bankrupt as non-PE-owned companies.
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Jan 136 min read


Taxing Crypto? And Just Where Is That Consumer Recession?
Yes, net loss rates in percentage terms post default are back up to 2010 levels, but the dollar volume of net charge-offs remains very low.
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Jan 58 min read


Update: Top Bank Asset Managers
As and when GS can exit the loss leading credit card relationship with AAPL, the performance of the business should improve significantly.
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Dec 30, 20248 min read


Liquidity & Rates Fall as Trump Trades Beckon
What does the upsurge in repo rates at the end of September suggest? None of the media who supposedly cover the Fed seem able to ask.
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Dec 23, 20247 min read


Update: Has Jane Fraser Redeemed Citigroup? Nope.
Citi seems to be tracking the group now, whereas pre-COVID the stock significantly underperformed in terms of market beta. But performance?
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Dec 18, 20247 min read


The IRA Bank Book Q4 2024
WGA notes that bank stock prices have soared in the second half of 2024, with the WGA Bank Top 10 Index up 40% year-to-date in 2024.
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Dec 16, 20243 min read


Liquidity Preference: SVB Financial Group, WaMu & Reemerging GSEs
Selling the Treasury's control position in the GSEs while dragging the furious shareholders along behind is not an attractive opportunity
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Dec 12, 20247 min read


Kamikaze GSE Release? Oh Yeah...
Yes, that's right, we are going to downgrade $8 trillion in GSE MBS and hundreds of billions in corporate debt.
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Dec 10, 202415 min read


WGA Bank Top 10 Index | Time to Short Financials?
When SCHW surpassed U.S. Bancorp in size in 2021, you knew that SCHW’s leadership had gotten lost.
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Dec 9, 20249 min read
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