Higher for Longer Turns to Higher Forever

Higher for Longer Turns to Higher Forever

I’m sorry, were you waiting to return to the happy days when you could get a 30-year fixed mortgage for less than 4%? Well, you might have to tighten the straps on your patience hat again because Ms. Yellen of the US Treasury said this week that rates will most likely...
On Second Thought

On Second Thought

Remember last summer when we spent endless days going over Team Regulator’s 1,000-page proposal for new bank rules? Well, after reading the comment section on their post—literally—it seems like Team Regulator wants a redo. On Wednesday, Jerome Powell of the Federal...
The Sound of Many Band-Aids

The Sound of Many Band-Aids

We were going to give credit risk and commercial real estate a pass this week, but the news wouldn’t let us. Late Thursday our already troubled friend, New York Community Bancorp (NYCB), said it had discovered “material weaknesses” in how it tracks loan risk. The...
Not All Quant Quakes Are Black Swans

Not All Quant Quakes Are Black Swans

Information about the Chinese financial markets is often fleeting, sparse, and long after the fact. This week, however, Bloomberg brought a piece on a recent Quant Quake, a headline too good to pass up. The piece talks about how Chinese quant hedge funds—hedge funds...
Even Scalier Scales

Even Scalier Scales

There is a new paper out that explores the need for a new category of hurricanes to capture those that have winds beyond 192 mph—of which the world has measured five, all in the last decade. The authors of the paper (James Kossin and Michael Wehner) predict that if...