Gregmal

So far, yes, but not if you overdo it. The economy is still fairly strong. If they kill the stuff that’s still chugging along, IE travel, entertainment, restaurants…all bets are off. And sadly, it seems that’s where hypnotized Jerry is now looking, instead of at actual inflation.

If the issue for banks is MTM, doesn’t bind buying or rate cutting guarantee more or less a solution? Much of the craziness with bonds hasn’t even been directly related to the Fed, but people speculating on where the fed ends up. If they came out and said we are holding at 4.75% for a year at least, I’d guarantee many of these assets reprice.

Idk I think there were actually quite a few people who said raise em to 4% or so and then take a breather. Not get near 5 and start being a tough guy when even dumb dumb Elizabeth Warren can see you are off your rocker. Where things started getting funky is when this dope started getting hypnotized by people question his credibility and somehow shifted from worrying about inflation to obsessing over, of all things, jobs! Inflation reads have more or less done what you’d expect the last few months. No one can answer where the inflation problem currently sits because if you look at the big ones…energy, housing, commodities…you’ve got the exact opposite. Oil was at 120 a year ago. Powell had his soft landing and got tricked and now I think it’s still possible but definitely less likely. Throw it up there as another weird “can you believe that really happened” event from the 2020s….central banker trying to put people out of work because he can’t wait for larger sample sizes to be data dependent on.

Beginning of the end of this Fed game; end of the beginning…maybe..for the market leadership baton pass. Between overall inflation readings about to fall off a cliff, plus the biggest areas of excess, tech and crypto bombed out, plus now a very real risk the Fed comes out of this looking really, really stupid for their recklessness with rate hikes despite at the same time acknowledging their delayed effects….I would be shocked if there’s anything more than at most 25 bps more to go before a breather. Think they may even hold at the next meeting. I know it’s cool to be like wow look at how stupid EVERY bank is holding all those mortgages and treasuries…but let’s get real…the Fed and the banks work hand in hand due to the regulations…and it’s clear the Fed had zero plan or communications with the banks on the problems that THEY were deliberately creating out of little more than impatience. It’s now gonna be cat and mouse between the Fed and traders because it’s clearly in the Fed interest to have the banks rally a bit and recover, but when the market knows that…you typically get all the traders pushing the other way.

CRE is bombed out, so is small tech, so short term the stock probably has some downside, but from the current point in time out, these guys solve major problems in the project management process. Government contracts especially where overpaying for security of ass coverage is commonplace. This just seems like something that can work its way into a space that is still relatively archaic and ripe for disruption. Once in it’s hard to replace. So margin expansion is probably a given, as is decent growth on the base revenue if you look out a few years.

Coupang, Procore, Markel

All I can think of with these crypto crap banks getting busted was the times I’d see offers to stake your dogecoin for 8% or how you could margin bitcoin to by cardano or whatever. I just couldn’t help but laugh because offering margin meant that someone was lending against this stuff. But it didn’t stop there. Then we had waves of crypto “hedge funds” and I couldn’t help but think “what kind of scam is this? It’s all one big game of musical chairs…what do you need a hedge fund for?”…. So many people got rich off this and good for them. I’m generally happy for the success of other people. Because end of the day the success will be fleeting if it generally isn’t acquired in a way that is unique. But there is an irony of tech and crypto being the main casualties of the east money hurricane from 2021. And of course, the banks….who are just always the bystander who gets hit by a bus.

This is the right move if true. Good on Janet and Jerry and Joe. Starting out my career at the tail end of GFC…I was a naive but loyal capitalist and die hard “they all should have known better and not been greedy with their mortgages” in response to the banks vs the people taking out mortgages argument. I’ve somewhat evolved over the past 10 years…and giving life the opportunity to present to me different viewpoints has also helped. At which point I think it’s easy to arrive at a conclusion that there are just certain limitations to the amount of due diligence or effort a normal person should be expected to endure. Going through a mortgage process…I’ve done it over a dozen times, is rigorous. Sure, we should all have $500 an hour lawyers to review the docs line by line. But it doesn’t work like that and a slick salesman or banker can easily dupe a normal, well intentioned person. Extending this to bank deposits, I think it’s even more true. How can you have a stable banking system, let alone one that isn’t a duopoly/oligopoly(more so than it already is) if average folks need to do hedge fund level due diligence to ensure the money they deposit or have direct deposited in the checking accounts is going to be available? It’s crazy and just not viable and should be guaranteed in far higher amounts than the F.D.I.C. limits. As for the bank itself, it should fail. Shareholders and bond holders should meet their fate. But that’s the difference, some parties entered this engagement with the expectation of something beneficial … others, just figured hey this is where people in my hood keep their cash. Big difference.

I’m a huge fan of Ackman the investor but following his investing involves subjecting yourself to Ackman the person. And Ackman the person is just a world class scumbag slimeball. Just using the names mentioned here as a benchmark, Chanos is deceptive and all but just pushing his agenda/book…run of the mill Wall Street. Talib is obviously an insecure guy who needs attention and thrives off feeling superior and kicking people when they’re down. Then there’s Billy, who does both of those but then wraps it in a stench filled, totally insincere veil of benevolence and “I’m trying to help the world be a better place” mantra. Which makes me wanna vomit.

COVID is the only time they really just said ok let’s ensure we get it right, no bs. Pretty much every other instance they look to half ass a solution, or band aid stuff, or appease those who think they need to retain their “credibility” and generally speaking, it doesn’t work. I’m still not quite sure what’s driving people other than attention, panic, or self interest, but this kind of event seems to be amplified by the fact it effects all the social media people and techies. Wonder how many of these smaller companies end up inside FANG. While I think the census is clearly a gross and bigly red Monday open, but when you look rationally here.. well capitalized FANG and big banks are probably beneficiaries of all this.

Did anyone read the latest Ackman stuff? Is he drunk? Paraphrased here but basically everyone is going to pull everything from non insured bank deposits and go to treasuries which is going to cause a global economic meltdown, which in turn will cause rates to decline, which will hamper the Feds ability to raise rates which is necessary to slow the economy and defeat inflation….lol wtf?

Taleb is another one. The common theme with most short sellers or folks like this is this personality defect where they need to feel superior. They’re all the same. They need to be the guy during the once to twice a decade declines who stands up and lectures and boasts about how much money they made and how everyone else should have seen it coming. IE roundabout “look at me, see how smart I am” boasting. All while others are down. However we saw too how these guys do the other 90% of the time..whether it Paulson or Einhorn or Chanos….no one envies their 3/5/10 year performance records. I mean look at Chanos for instance now…pathetic old man who spends his days tweeting, often in deliberately negative and deceptive ways, hoping to influence his holdings lol. It’s sad.

Truist I’m going to keep an eye on. However I think the money will be finding a few derivative trades of the regionals. Not sure exactly what they are yet, but things that get thrown out with the bath water due to guilty by association or shoot first ask questions later mentality. I think we already kind of saw signs of this with JPM getting crushed and then reversing Friday. The dumb dumbs and bots will bid down everything, but then real investors will realize winners are being given away. Not much different than tech stocks in March of 2020. Folks sold them and it’s like yo, you realize this is good for them, right?

I can’t imagine having that much money; and still feeling the need to be a self serving piece of shit like that, for the purpose of acquiring more money…. Its so strange but there really is nothing that gets these slimy finance guys hard like short selling and talking bank runs.

So if they don’t have any issue regarding their holdings, that BAC or WFC doesn’t have, and it’s really just about liquidity, this seems to be a rather easy problem to solve, and IDK, but judging from the read between the lines crap from Ackman et al, probably even at some price, becomes a mighty good deal for someone. Given the % of non FDIC accounts, you’re basically acquiring a HNW/private client biz.

100%. It’s why I laugh when these idiots give their prepared remarks and talk about how “inflation isn’t coming down fast enough”….morherfucker…there’s CPI reads once a month and there’s only 12 months in a year…of course your damn monthly data reads aren’t at 2% from 9% 4-5 months later LOL. And you shouldn’t be alarmed that in 2 weeks they didn’t get there yet either.

Think of it again, full circle…Teary Eyed Bill last spring..”the Fed MUST raise rates substantially to regain credibility!”…as he holds rate swaps poised to make billions if that happens. Now? Teary Eyed Bill…”we must bail them out, and use immigration to solve the labor issue”…..

^^totally. I definitely think this event is the beginning of the last chapter or so of this saga. The Fed has done a remarkable job, overall, since GFC, but the last two years really put egg on their faces in a big way. They let ZIRP run way too long into 2022, and then overreacted way too heavily with all the tough guy talking and rate hikes, culminating in this weeks events. People can shit on BofAs reserves/duration of holdings…but it’s been pretty darn clear over the last decade BofA, on the spectrum of good banks and bad ones, is a good bank. They and many others just played the environment they had to, which the Fed created. Then along comes JPow, like an insecure 14 year old girl, worried about what others think of his “credibility”…and freaks out with rates hikes over the course of 9 freakin months lol. The biggest egg on the face though, IMO, isn’t even policy decision, but the fact that they very clearly demonstrated that they can be manipulated by people wealthy and influential enough, simply by publicly attacking the their “credibility”. At the end of all this, they showed they cared more about the public perception of their credibility, than they actually cared about doing their jobs.

I’m kind of ok with the idea of guaranteeing deposits. These aren’t speculations and aren’t people taking risk; they’re putting their money somewhere that is federally regulated and should be safe. $250k is a joke for an individual and for a business it’s nothing. People don’t store money under the mattress anymore, that’s how it’s evolved…if they are mismanaged, it’s either fraud, or a government fuck up. Here it’s kinda both. Who in the world didn’t have enough time to see this coming? It’s been orchestrated for 2 damn years. At the same time, if Powell is going to get power drunk and recklessly jack rates with no awareness of anything just cuz he s mad people still have jobs….is that really the fault of Sally running a tech startup or her employees hoping to get their paycheck next week? Even all the cash hoarders…how is your money safe if these things start becoming precedent? I had an investor years ago, one of the wealthiest dudes in Bermuda….was a conservative, old school guy. Had $42M in a Lehman money market fund in 2008…..there need to be lines where people can assume safety and not be held to some super duper high due diligence standard or “shoulda known better” scolding. Putting your money in a bank where you get 0% in return should qualify for that.

I cleaned up on the financials in the GFC aftermath trade but I still have trouble getting excited about them. I may mock all the drama queens and yes, it’s amusing to me how earnings revisions weren’t quite doing enough to get below 4000 SPY so we needed to drum up a banking crisis, but largely, things just aren’t exciting one way or another for the most part. A banking crisis that walloped much of the inflationista playbook at that, imagine? Lol. Even here, banks look like 10-20% annualized returners which is fine, but there’s an awful lot of bagholder risk on the table too. BAM is just a clear no go for me at this point. I keep trying to find reasons to sell Fairfax, but can’t because it’s so damn solid and still not a glam stock, and otherwise am starting to buy MKL and hopefully another crack at Berkshire a little lower. But the range of outcomes on the traditional banks just seems to be gyrating all over. Powell is totally hypnotized on this idea that people having jobs and getting paid more is bad even though we are on the verge of a massive collapse in inflation and possibly even deflation. It’s all just a peculiar situation. So generally after much pontification, I just have been doing nothing but continuing to be long well located shelter and 1%er prosperity.

Added some MANU sub $20. Flirted with the idea of some USB but just couldn’t get excited about it

Does any bank ever really manage risk the way normal people with skin in the game do? The bigger banks all basically just look at the regulations and get as close to them as they can and then look for ways to get around limitations. Banking has become automated even though real people still do most of it. It’s just box checking without a care in the world for context, which generally works, but when there’s an outlier typically everyone has been making the same mistake or using the same workarounds.

Weren’t banks the high rate beneficiaries? Too funny. The hedgies got the puppet to do exactly what they wanted. It’s dangerous chasing something that does exist. But hey, at least jay showed everyone his credibility lol

Yea this would go down as what’s called an asset sale in the finance biz lol or transfer of the assets. Carcass is done