Colin's Financial Pages

Hot News

Another banking failure...

"FURIOUS Nationwide customers say they've been unable to pay bills and rent today after a glitch has delayed payments."

"...look out if this repo crisis and stock market continues to run full speed, as it is currently. A 40%+ crash could be coming sooner rather than later..."

"Consensus estimates project a 2.6% annual decline in the S&P 500’s earnings for the fourth quarter of 2019. If that happens, it would mark the fourth straight quarter of annual declines. That’s bad news for the stock market as the S&P 500’s forward price-to-earnings multiple has now increased to 19, Barron’s reports"

"...customers checked their accounts this morning to find expected payments not turning up... three hours later ... their expected payments continued to be absent"

"Yorkshire Bank customers are reporting not receiving their scheduled wages
Website Down Detector notes hundreds of complaints of problems with the bank
It is claimed that the money issues are related to an 'IT problem' with the service"

"The Down Detector website reported thousands of users unable to access online and mobile banking from around 4am. And customers of the three banks complained of the outage of social media this morning"

"European lenders have issued about €100bn of new “bail-in” debt in 2019 to meet tougher post-crisis rules designed to protect taxpayers from footing the bill for future bank failures."

"[A] 10% to 20% [correction] would be quite possible if this market [S&P 500] gets to 3,500 well ahead of my schedule," he said.

"Guggenheim Partners’ Chief Investment Officer Scott Minerd... says the Fed’s easy-money policies over the past year have helped pump markets full of liquidity. This has created an environment comparable to that of 1998, when a 45-day correction shaved nearly 20% off the S&P 500."

US junk bonds may fall “significantly” after a rally this year that has left the riskier end of the corporate bond market in a perilous state, Moody’s has warned.

Sweden's central bank, once enthusiastic about using negative interest rates, has put them back at zero. They see "negative effects". The FT article quotes Citigroup analyst Tiia Lehto saying that this "strengthens the notion that zero truly is a lower bound in other advanced economies, including the US, UK and Australia". Those people who may have thought there was plenty of room for central bankers to cut, cut and cut again in the pursuit of ultra-easy money may find that there is no such room.

"The stock market is flashing ever-stronger orange about the health of Europe’s banks. Yet the regulatory community tells us good news about its capital strength – despite unsustainably low profitability..."

"There won't be any idea of addressing these leverage ratios. They're just going to get a lot worse when the recession comes. And you're going to see en masse downgradings of the investment-grade corporate bond market."

"The central bank also acted forcefully to forestall the danger of another upset in the US “repo” market, almost doubling its interventions to $490bn..."

"...could create a big windfall for the fund and its investors if the stock market were to plunge before the end of March..."