This post was published at World Alternative Media
Category: Banking
This Is Where America’s Most Debt-Burdened People Live
Americans have racked up almost $13 trillion in personal debt for things like mortgages, car notes and student loans. $13 trillion is such an enormous pile of money, it’s hard to imagine what that looks like across the country. So, HowMuch.net created a new map to figure out exactly what’s going on…
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Fri, 12/29/2017 –.
“Q1 Stock Market Outlook: We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Slide”
Submitted by FFWiley
If 2018 rings in a bear market, it could look something like the Kennedy Slide of 1962.
That was my conclusion in ‘Riding the Slide,’ published in early September, where I showed that the Kennedy Slide was unique among bear markets of the last eighty years. It was the only bear that wasn’t obviously provoked by rising inflation, tightening monetary policy, deteriorating credit markets or, less commonly, world war or depression.
Moreover, market conditions leading up to the Slide should be familiar – they’re not too far from market conditions since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. In the first year after Kennedy’s election, as in the first year after Trump’s election, inflation seemed under control, interest rates were low, credit spreads were tight, and the economy was growing. And, in both cases, the stock market was booming.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Sat, 12/30/2017 –.
Did The “Big Short” Retail CMBX Trade Pay Off In 2017?
Since the start of 2017, a number of opportunistic investors sought to profit from the expected demise of the physical retail sector, a trade which we and others dubbed the next ‘Big Short” – also known as the “Amazon crushes everyone” trade – and in which investors bought credit-default swaps against subordinate bonds in certain CMBX derivative indices that are tied to CMBS deals with healthy concentrations of loans against shopping malls and retail centers.
As CMBS advisory Trepp notes, the trade gained notoriety last February, when spreads for the BBB- and BB rated components of the indices went through a massive widening. They continued to widen at a somewhat steady clip until only recently. That alone indicates the trade, particularly if executed early, has paid off nicely.
CMBX consists of a group of indices that are each linked to a group of 25 CMBS conduit deals issued during a particular year. The indices are used as an indicator of the overall performance of the CRE market and enables investors to make bets on corresponding long and short positions.
Investors who expect deals in a specific index to incur losses can buy protection: they would pay a fixed-rate premium to a seller of protection who would bet against losses. If losses occur, the seller of protection would cover them. So, a short trade becomes most profitable when deals in an index suffer actual losses. It also becomes profitable in the event spreads widen, as they have.
Spreads Move Wider and Wider
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Fri, 12/29/2017 –.
The EU Bad Loan Crisis to Get Much Worse – The Solution = Financial Pandemic
The bad loan (‘non-performing loan’ (NPL)) crisis in Europe is well known and many have been calling for this issue to be addressed. In Italy, the bad loan crisis has reached 21% of GDP. While NPLs dropped to 4.8% of all loans in the EU as a whole during the first quarter of 2017, they remained well above 40% in Greece and Cyprus, at 18.5% in Portugal, and 14.8% in Italy according to the European Banking Authority.
Now comes the bureaucrats with zero experience to save the day – or is that to create a financial pandemic in the EU? The EU Commission (EUC) along with the European Central Bank (ECB), want to ensure that banks promptly sell real estate, stocks, bonds and other assets that serve to collateralize loans according to their Mid-term Review of the Capital Markets Union Action Plan. Member States are required to adopt laws that facilitate the central directive. At this time, any bank cannot just sell a property that secures a loan. The problem is, all loans, whether secured or not, are valued the same.
This post was published at Armstrong Economics on Dec 29, 2017.
Mohamed El-Erian: “The World Is Nearing A Tipping Point”
Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz, expects a fundamental shift in the global economy that will either result in a powerful economic boom or in renewed tremors at the financial markets.
In the world finance, there are few people as highly respected as Mohamed El-Erian. Not only is the chief economic adviser at Allianz well versed when it comes to navigating the global financial markets, he’s also brilliant at explaining complex developments in a comprehensible way. The most prominent example is the concept of the New Normal which he and his colleagues developed in early 2009 when he was at the helm of Pimco together with Bill Gross. Today, this concept of a new economic reality, defined by slow growth and super low interest rates, is widely accepted. However, Mr. El-Erian predicts that the New Normal won’t continue much longer. He sees significant changes ahead that will either lead to a powerful economic boom or to a recession with renewed tremors in the financial markets.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Thu, 12/28/2017 –.
How To Go Bankrupt: Slowly Then Suddenly
In Hemingway’s, ‘The Sun Also Rises,’ one of the characters, Bill, asks his friend, ‘Mike,’ how he went bankrupt. Mike replied, ‘I had a lot of friends. False friends. Then I had creditors…’ This passage from the novel comes to mind when I hear ads during the local sports radio programming from mortgage brokers urging listeners to use a cash-out refi or home equity loan to take care of credit card debt that piled up during the holidays. Beneath the surface is the message, ‘c’mon in, the water is fine, go ahead and take on even more debt.’
If in fact the retail sales turn out to be as strong as projected, it’s because the average household has tapped into its savings and used an unusually large amount of credit card debt to fund holiday spending this year:
This post was published at Investment Research Dynamics on December 28, 2017.
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