Midyear Banking Review
Despite a very rough patch of late, Disney CEO Bob Chapek has won reappointment as top Big Mouse exec. Chapek “could remain at the helm of Disney until at least 2025” and has a lot to tackle, including a flagging stock price,...more
Back at it. Hope all had a great Memorial Day break. Despite our first week of gains on the Street in a good long while, pessimism is the name of the game for most in the U.S. economy at the moment. Front and center: the...more
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal took dramatic action this week, firing two top execs, freezing “most new hiring,” and announcing plans to slash spending “as the social media company tries to change its business trajectory while...more
Peloton’s quarterly earnings report showed that the company’s early-pandemic boom times are now firmly behind it, as the connected fitness bike maker delivered losses of $757 million for the first three months of 2022—“far...more
A slumping tech sector pulled markets lower on Tuesday, “adding to a losing streak that has April shaping up to be Wall Street’s worst month in two years.” For the S&P 500, that translates into a nearly 8% decline for the...more
In the reversal heard around the tech world on Monday, Elon Musk announced that he would not be joining Twitter’s Board of Directors after all. The social media company had extended the invite to Musk after news broke that he...more
It was a slog, to be sure, but Congress finally made President Biden’s infrastructure plan a reality late Friday, guaranteeing nearly “$600 billion in new federal aid to improve highways, bridges, dams, public transit, rail,...more
Last week, most observers focused on the more than 11% drop in the stock market due to public health and related supply concerns. In response, the Federal Reserve made an aggressive 50 basis point interest rate cut on March...more
When 2019 began, the U.S. stock market had just hit the bottom of a 20% correction. An escalating trade war and rising interest rate worries were top of mind, and predictions of a looming recession were becoming more common....more
Google announced late Tuesday that co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are “stepping down from executive roles at Google’s parent company, Alphabet.” Google CEO Sundar Pichai will now helm both operations, while Page and...more
T-Mobile chief and fan-of-magenta John Legere has announced that he’ll be stepping down in April at the end of his current contract. Legere will be succeeded by Mike Sievert, the carrier’s current president and COO....more
I recently listened to the Great Courses series of lectures, entitled Crashes and Crisis: Lessons form a History of Financial Disasters, hosted by Professor Connel Fullenkamp. It was so entertaining that this week I am...more
Economic Commentary - The U.S. economy continues to show signs of improvement. Unemployment fell to 3.7 percent, and second quarter GDP grew to an annualized rate of 4.2 percent, which is the highest rate of growth since...more
Stock Market Commentary - Volatility returned to markets with a vengeance in the first quarter of 2018. After surging nearly 6% in January, the strongest start to the year since 1997, the S&P 500 plummeted by 10% from its...more
The latest Wall Street revolution appears to be driven in large part by companies like Creative Planning, a registered investment adviser in a suburb of Kansas City that’s helping lead a shift away from brokers and mutual...more
Following up on news last week that Bill Ackman was finally done with his grand Valeant experiment, the Times gives us a deeper look at what was really going on with the activist investor’s bet and ultimate $4 billion loss....more
Financial transaction provider Euronet Worldwide’s made an unsolicited bid to acquire MoneyGram for about $1 billion in cash, throwing a wrench into Ant Financial’s plan to use MG as a way to break into the US market and...more
A collection of corporate heavy hitters are betting big on the blockchain technology behind bitcoin rival Ethereum to build a computing system to track data and financial contracts. The project is seen by some as a way to...more
FinCEN is extending its campaign to press title insurance companies to reveal the real buyers behind shell companies that pay cash for high-end real estate deals in select cities around the country....more
On February 10th, the SEC took action to formally approve of changes proposed by the NASDAQ Stock Market, NYSE MKT LLC, and New York Stock Exchange LLC’s, to shorten the standard settlement cycle for most broker-dealer...more
Writing in her weekly New York Times (NYT) Fair Game column, in a piece entitled “The Trump Effect: Time To Buckle Up”, Gretchen Morgenson noted, “investors are now scratching their heads trying to figure out what his...more
ECONOMIC REVIEW AND OUTLOOK - In this past year we were reminded again to expect the unexpected: The well-established political classes in the U.K., the U.S. and Italy learned that democracy was their Achilles’ heel, and...more
We learned about Navient and its allegedly trouble-filled student-loan servicing practices yesterday. Turns out the issues are not only long-standing, but they bear similarities to the mortgage-lending issues that were at...more
1. Despite dire predictions about how his election might affect investor confidence, the U.S. stock market is surging. Still, global markets see Trump as an uncertainty. What does a Trump presidency mean for businesses...more
A new trading link dropping next week will give international investors access to more than 800 stocks listed on China’s Shenzhen stock market, the boom/bust venue best known for its “rampant speculation”....more