The Institutional Risk Analyst

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.

When President Donald Trump says the Fed should cut interest rates, he is probably right – at least speaking from the perspective of the real estate markets.

The Trump budget package is priority number one on Capitol Hill, but odds of the big tax bill passing are falling every day. The White House still needs 25 votes in the House and May is upon us.

President Trump will not try to fire Chairman Powell. Why not? First, because Powell cannot be removed save for malfeasance. Second, because firing Powell would seriously piss off Senate Republicans, killing Trump's hopes for tax legislation this year.

When Elizabeth Warren and Maxine Waters spoke publicly against the CapitalOne-Discover transaction, they were actually supporting the monopoly position of JPMorgan and other large banks. By opposing CapitalOne-Discover and, indirectly, supporting JPM, Warren, Waters and other progressives are actually hurting low income consumers.

Some of the smaller holders of MSRs may ask themselves if selling right now is not the best strategy over a 36-48 month horizon. 

The paper money economy created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933 trapped Americans and the world into using fiat dollars.

Who are the two most powerful people in the Trump White House?

Some of the largest banks by assets have dropped from the top quartile into the bottom half of the distribution for the top 100 banks

US history over the past century was largely written by liberal Democrats, who at least rhetorically opposed tariffs and embraced inflation

Is the flow of toxic waste pouring from busted private equity portfolios into credit trades a threat to insurance companies? Yup.