Inc. (January 9)
“Everyone loves talking about the stock market, but the $28 trillion Treasury market is the fortuneteller of the pair—bonds are now flashing warnings of a Fed policy error, resurgent price pressures, and a ballooning debt pile.” Contrary to expectations, “bond yields have surged since the Fed began cutting interest rates.”
Tags: Ballooning debt, Bonds, Fed, Fortuneteller, Interest rates, Policy error, Price pressures, Stock market, Treasury market, Warnings, Yields
Los Angeles Times (January 9)
“Five people have died, but officials say the death toll is likely to be higher. More than 9,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed and at least 130,000 residents are under evacuation orders. Experts say L.A. is not out of danger yet and these fires have the potential to be the costliest wildfire disaster in American history.”
Tags: Costliest, Damaged, Danger, Death toll, Destroyed, Disaster, Evacuation, L.A., Officials, Residents, Structures, U.S., Wildfire
Bloomberg (January 8)
“Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton dropped his threat to cut off big US banks from municipal-bond deals after a slew of Wall Street firms exited a controversial climate-finance alliance.” Paxton’s approval power over “most public bond offerings” allowed him considerable “influence over which banks can participate in such transactions.” Paxton’s office announced a review in 2023 of financial firms that were “members of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, which he has repeatedly criticized.”
Tags: A.G., Banks, Climate, Controversial, Exited, Finance, Influence, Municipal-bond deals, Net-Zero Banking Alliance, Paxton, Texas, Transactions, U.S., Wall Street firms
American Banker (January 7)
“JPMorgan Chase bid farewell to the Net-Zero Banking Alliance on Tuesday, making it the last big U.S. bank to leave the climate-banking group ahead of the second Trump administration.” The latest defection “comes on the heels of similar departures last week by three of its peers — Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. In early December, Goldman Sachs became the first large U.S. bank to leave the alliance. Wells Fargo’s exit was reported about two weeks later.”
Tags: Bank, BoA, Citigroup, Climate, Defection, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Net-Zero Banking Alliance, Trump, U.S., Wells Fargo
Investment Week (January 6)
In 2024, the London Stock Exchange had the lowest number of new listings since at least 2010, when records began. “There were just 18 IPOs on the main market and AIM last year,” In contrast, 88 companies either delisted or transferred their “primary listing from the main market in 2024, with a plethora of these companies citing declining liquidity and falling valuations as the reasons for ditching the LSE.”
Tags: 2010, 2024, Aim, Declining liquidity, Delisted, Ditching, Falling valuations, IPOs, Listings, LSE
South China Morning Post (January 5)
“More than 30,000 car dealers in mainland China are facing another bleak year in 2025, with many turning from profit-generators into corporate failures in two years under a debilitating price war and an e-commerce onslaught.” Amid the switch to EVs, price wars “resulted in 177.6 billion yuan (US$24.3 billion) of losses between January and November” with the “financial squeeze” blamed for the closure of approximately 4,000 dealerships.
Tags: 2025, Bleak, Cars, China, Closure, Corporate failures, Dealerships, Debilitating, E-commerce, EV, Financial squeeze, Losses, Price war, Profit-generators
Barron’s (January 3)
“Of all the fearless forecasts put out there for the new year, one conspicuously missing from those lists is probably the easiest one: The United States of America will lose its last remaining triple-A credit rating.” Standard & Poor’s was the first to lower its rating on U.S. government debt in 2011. In 2023, “Fitch Ratings followed suit.” That November, Moody’s Investors Service “lowered its outlook to negative.” It seems inevitable, especially given Trump’s desire for tax cuts, that Moody’s will eventually lower its Aaa rating as well. “Given the lack of serious measures, so far, to slow the government debt growth, the U.S.A. doesn’t merit a triple-A rating.”
Tags: 2011, 2023, Credit rating, Fearless, Fitch, Forecasts, Government debt, Inevitable, Lower, Merit, Moody's, Negative, Outlook, Rating, S&P, Tax cuts, Triple-A, Trump, U.S.
Forbes (January 3)
“By the end of 2024, it was clear average national wages weren’t keeping pace with the rate of inflation…. The BOJ decided on December 19 that Japan isn’t ready to normalize interest rates,” with the official rate remaining 0.25%. This presents “quite a paradox for global investors who’d rushed into Nikkei 225 Stock Average stocks. If the BOJ thinks Japan still requires economic training wheels after all this time, why should they bet on Japan Inc.?”
Tags: 2024, BOJ, Global investors, Inflation rate, Interest rates, Japan Inc., National wages, Nikkei 225, Official rate, Paradox, Training wheels
Reuters (January 2)
Jane Street and Citadel Securities looked primed to seize “a much bigger slice of the $150 billion global-markets pie,” disrupting incumbent trading giants like JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank “who in 2025 will notice electronic market-makers acting more like banks.” Until now, there’s been a “seemingly happy co-existence” with the electronic market makers focused on flow, but that “will end in 2025” when “the upstarts” flex their greatly expanded capital base to make “a fresh assault on bond and commodity trading.”
Tags: $150 billion, Banks, BoA, Bonds, Capital base, Citadel Securities, Commodity trading, Deutsche Bank, Disrupting, Electronic market-makers, Global markets, Incumbent, Jane Street, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Trading giants
The Economist (January 2)
“Already things have turned nasty. Donald Trump has not even got to the White House, and his raucous court of advisers have rounded on each other.” This marks only the beginning of “a clash of cultures” as tech invades Washington. Tech’s “worldview is strikingly at odds with the maga movement.” Yet, it is possible that “out of Trumpian chaos and contradiction, something good might just emerge.“
Tags: Advisers, Chaos, Clash of cultures, Contradiction, Maga, Nasty, Raucous, Tech, Trump, Washington, White House, Worldview
