Something just doesn’t smell right. As I’ve pointed out over the past few weeks, bill yields have been falling. The front, the 4-week instrument, has seen its equivalent rate plummet. This is consistent with deep liquidity problems as well as looming rate cuts (the two do go hand-in-hand). Over the past two session, including today, however, bill yields have spiked. [...]
Back in October, late October specifically, the Bank of Canada removed the word “gradual” from its policy statement. Inflation, staff Economists projected, was moving up as was the Canadian economy. It was finally time to become more aggressive. Freed from that one word, BoC officials could opt for a “rate hike” at every meeting. It was widely expected in December [...]
It isn’t just US or European banks which are shrinking. The nature of this post-August 9, 2007, world is just that – global. Sure, there are regulations which have made investment banking more expensive. But there isn’t a rule or law that Wall Street (really Lombard Street) wouldn’t “discover” a way to circumvent it if they all thought it was [...]
And we come full circle back again. It’s not what they say, it’s what they do. Kansas City Fed CEO Esther George was at least consistent, unlike all the other voting FOMC members. Throughout 2015 and 2016, the rest of them would say the economy was strong but then vote the other way, no “rate hike.” December 2015 was the [...]
Goldman Sachs reported FICC revenues of just $1 billion in Q4 2017. That was the lowest for the Wall Street firm, technically a bank, since it converted from properly a securities business to one during the worst of 2008. That was 50% less in “bond trading” than Goldman had produced during Q4 2016. You start to get the sense that [...]
Deutsche Bank’s CEO John Cryan warned that the bank’s quarterly results for Q3 would be no better than those produced in the two disappointing quarters prior. He has been proved by the bank’s reported results to have been optimistic. Trading revenue fell an alarming 30% year-over-year, with DB joining the rest of Wall Street in blaming the absence of “volatility” [...]
Goldman Sachs was the latest Wall Street bank to jump on low volatility. Despite an enormous gain in prop trading, most of the rest of the firm’s results were moving in the wrong direction. In its market making segment, for example, the firm booked $2.1 billion in net revenue in the third quarter, 22% less than what it took in [...]
If the essence of modern eurodollar money is bank balance sheet capacity, then we need not wonder what has gone wrong or why. The very heart of this global currency system no longer beats so healthy and strong. Global banks shrink rather than expand at a breakneck pace, their desire to do the latter restrained by the incapacity of the [...]
With earnings season growing closer, banks are beginning to report on their initial estimates of how they fared during the “taper summer”. So far, it is not looking like they did well at all (not that that was a surprise). Despite all their elegant models and simulations, including risk/hedging systems, traditional statistical evaluation, no matter how complex, has trouble with [...]
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