The Institutional Risk Analyst

New York | The Federal Open Market Committee cut the target for short-term funds another quarter point last night, raising the question...

New York | In this issue of The Institutional Risk Analyst, we ponder how the actions or inaction of policy makers can create systemic...

Orlando | This week The Institutional Risk Analyst is participating in the Information Exchange sponsored by Black Knight, Inc. (BKI),...

La Jolla | This week The Institutional Risk Analyst is in La Jolla for The Chairman's Conference of The California Mortgage Bankers...

New York | We had a great trip last week, participating in Ellie Mae’s (ELLI) Experience 2019 and surveying the rich (and water sodden)...

Large Cap Financials & Asset Inflation

While WFC may be the object of scorn, its operations continue pretty much as before. As we told SquawkBox a week ago, having WFC trading at a discount to JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) is not a normal state of affairs. The former has better nominal as well as risk adjusted returns than JPM on most days, but of late WFC senior management has been slicing off figurative fingers and toes in a stunning display of reputational self-destruction.

April 9, 2017 | This week brings the start of Q1 2017 earnings for many banks, large and small. In order to better inform the subsequent prognostications, we borrow a line from the Passover Seder and ask: why is this bank different from all other banks? This question is not only important to understanding bank financial performance and earnings, but also to appreciate the subtleties of the evolving regulatory narrative in Washington around big banks and “too big to fail.”