The Institutional Risk Analyst

If we told you that large cap financials are outperforming both the S&P 500 and bitcoin over the past month, what would you say? 

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?

Like many names in the fintech space, growing profits and earnings are usually an indication that a stock is exiting max upside period

You can tell lies and damn lies about the idea of releasing Fannie and Freddie, but the SEC and FINRA cannot and will not say a word. 

The rotation away from institutional investors to retail funding source for the $1.7 trillion direct lending market is an ominous sign

We think that the whole banking industry could be driven into multiple periods of loss as they divert income to loss provisions. 

Is AFRM maturing from a hot new fintech entrant to a familiar face headed for a bank license?? Yikes.

COIN has been helped by a groundswell of positive comment about crypto in 2023...

Since Block has not yet changed its ticker symbol, perhaps Mr. Dorsey will eventually change the company's name back to Square...

Take the financials and add some unicorn dust in terms of innovation to the mix and perhaps a double-digit PE ratio for PYPL makes sense.

Is SQ really, REALLY worth 25x book value? Our respectful answer to that question is no.

The evolution of fintech companies into regulated banks has implications for public market valuations...