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  February 12, 2024

  Glimpsing the future economy through post-WW2 America

  

  Price jumps are finally beginning to slow down…

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  February 5, 2024

  Trouble looms over the banking sector

  

  A scary trend is emerging in banking… As the financial sector has wrapped up its fiscal year reports for 2023, banks have noticed a growing problem… more consumers and businesses might not pay back their loans.

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  February 2, 2024

  The herd mentality can cause huge losses

  

  Pod shops, also known as multi-manager hedge funds, have grown significantly in popularity and assets over the past two decades. As the name implies, pod shops allocate capital to numerous external investment managers across a variety of strategies. By diversifying risk across multiple managers, the goal of pod shops is to smooth returns while maintaining upside potential.

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  January 22, 2024

  Bonds are still the way to go

  

  The year commenced with a surprising twist in economic indicators, challenging the Fed’s strategic balance.

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  January 8, 2024

  Computers haven’t completely replaced the “factor” strategy

  

  In 2015, Cliff Asness’ hedge fund AQR had a respectable $23 billion in assets under management (“AUM”). And his strategy, based on something called “factor investing,” was taking the world by storm.

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  December 11, 2023

  Another subprime crisis is on the horizon

  

  Back in 2019, the bank bundled together about 75,000 auto loans in a bond product called "Drive 2019-3."

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  December 4, 2023

  Quiet ripples started just before the financial tempest

  

  Continuing claims, or the number of people unemployed for at least five weeks, was up almost 12% year over year in October.

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  November 20, 2023

  Junk bonds are disappearing

  

  Neither investors nor banks want junk bonds, and companies still need them.

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  November 13, 2023

  Companies are going to need money eventually

  

  October was the slowest borrowing month of the entire year. And it’s not just that it was the worst month this year… it was the worst October since 2011.

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  October 30, 2023

  Here’s how a recession could cure this economy

  

  The narrative the market has been talking about for a while has been the "soft landing" story.

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  October 23, 2023

  Trouble in private equity means trouble for all

  

  Determining the difficulty companies face in obtaining credit isn't a challenge. Every quarter, the Fed provides insights into credit tightness via the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey or the SLOOS.

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  October 9, 2023

  The Fed is finally destroying the credit market

  

  U.S. companies have about $100 billion of speculative debt maturities coming due this year. Over the next two years, that figure will nearly quadruple. Almost $250 billion in speculative debt maturities is due next year and $389 billion in 2025.

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  October 2, 2023

  Don’t bet on a soft landing

  

  Remember, a hard landing is just the modern language for a recession. And when it happens, one other thing is pretty much guaranteed to happen, a bear market for stocks.

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  September 18, 2023

  Revenge spending might have doomed the economy

  

  Macro hedge funds came out of the woodwork in January to brag about their fantastic 2022 gains.

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  September 11, 2023

  Years Of Share Buybacks May Be Coming To A Halt

  

  As we mentioned, when rates are low, it’s more efficient just to borrow money to reward investors. As long as your business is running, you can spend as little as possible on capex, and investors still get paid.

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  August 28, 2023

  Listen to the credit market

  

  It wasn't just the "Big Six" AI firms rallying. The Russell 2000 small-cap index rose 14% from the end of May to the end of July.

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  August 21, 2023

  This Industry Stands To Benefit From Big Government Subsidies

  

  The U.S. wants to see places formerly ravaged by deindustrialization and rustbelt decay come back to life. These subsidies are a chance to make this happen. As factories moved abroad, we abandoned thousands of towns and cities around the country.

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  August 7, 2023

  American companies can’t afford to burn more cash

  

  Back in May, we wrote that corporate balance sheets were finally returning to "normal,” down from historically rich levels. This month, things look a little different.

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  July 31, 2023

  This Might Not Be the Best Time to Follow the “Herd”

  

  Marks suggested the following framework to identify these types of situations.

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  July 17, 2023

  Here’s Why the Market Has Been Too Optimistic

  

  Investors are increasingly focused on the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to drive economic growth. However, some analysts are concerned that the underlying earnings of the economy could decline as AI-powered technologies displace workers. Despite these concerns, the stock market has continued to rally, suggesting that investors may be ignoring the potential risks of AI to earnings growth. In today's FA Alpha Daily, we'll take a look at the economy's earnings outlook through Uniform Accounting and see if analysts' concerns about the decline in earnings growth are reasonable.

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