I know you were, and enjoyed it. I pointed it out to them earlier today, perhaps got lost in the shuffle.
OT: Stock and Investment Talk
- Thread starter RU-05
- Start date
Guess they learned from the US/FDIC.
Swiss National Bank says it will provide Credit Suisse with liquidity if necessary
The SNB said Wednesday that Credit Suisse is currently well capitalized but that the central bank will provide additional liquidity if necessary.www.cnbc.com
The guy is allegedly an Al Czervik-level asshole. Word on the street is Marriott is looking to scoop it up on the cheap, which would be a huge win for Asbury Park
FRC seems really tempting because of their strong wealth management business but the downgrade really spooked me; impetus for more people pulling their money.
A lot of these regional have sucked balls for decades (barely keeping up with inflation).
I flipped FRC a few times yesterday and today for some nice gains. I probably held the stock less than a minute cumulatively. I also sold some Friday puts. Really well priced premiums
First Republic Bank Is Said to Weigh Options Including a Sale
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ank-is-said-to-weigh-options-including-a-sale
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ank-is-said-to-weigh-options-including-a-sale
First Republic Bank Is Said to Weigh Options Including a Sale
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ank-is-said-to-weigh-options-including-a-sale
Credit Suisse to borrow up to nearly $54 billion from Swiss National Bank
Credit Suisse announced it will be borrowing up to 50 billion Swiss francs ($53.68 billion) from the Swiss National Bank under a covered loan facility and a short-term liquidity facility.
Snap stock surges on report that Biden may ban TikTok
Shares in U.S. social media firms Snap and Meta jumped after a report indicated that the Biden Administration could ban TikTok.
TRADE IDEA;
President Biden put in a plan to start filling up the Strategic Oil Reserve between $67 and $72.
The Biden Administration released 180 million barrels last spring when oil was above $100.
Perhaps this puts in a temporary floor for WTI.
thehill.com
President Biden put in a plan to start filling up the Strategic Oil Reserve between $67 and $72.
The Biden Administration released 180 million barrels last spring when oil was above $100.
Perhaps this puts in a temporary floor for WTI.
Biden officials plan large purchases to replenish oil reserve
The Department of Energy announced Wednesday it will solicit bids to buy 60 million barrels of oil to help start to replenish the record release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) that Pres…
thehill.com
The TikTok ban has been talked about for a long time. Just may be a political bargaining chip. We shall see.Snap stock surges on report that Biden may ban TikTok
Shares in U.S. social media firms Snap and Meta jumped after a report indicated that the Biden Administration could ban TikTok.
DIG would be good for an oil trade, if you think the price will rebound a bit. It's the 2x of XLE.TRADE IDEA;
President Biden put in a plan to start filling up the Strategic Oil Reserve between $67 and $72.
The Biden Administration released 180 million barrels last spring when oil was above $100.
Perhaps this puts in a temporary floor for WTI.
Biden officials plan large purchases to replenish oil reserve
The Department of Energy announced Wednesday it will solicit bids to buy 60 million barrels of oil to help start to replenish the record release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) that Pres…
This is worth repeating. Using leverage in a bear market can be brutal for both, bulls and bears. Good luck controlling draw downs. Don’t do it.
Needless to say, I will be selling FRC today and closing out the options. Thankfully, very small investment. Maybe worth a flier, but definitely did not work in my favor.
Swiss were not going to let one of their iconic national banking brands go down.Credit Suisse to borrow up to nearly $54 billion from Swiss National Bank
Credit Suisse announced it will be borrowing up to 50 billion Swiss francs ($53.68 billion) from the Swiss National Bank under a covered loan facility and a short-term liquidity facility.
…and when it start to see 30’s get out. Don’t be gready. Simple rule for swing trades (weeks to months).
People loving BTC as the banking system is in crisis:
www.cnbc.com
Bitcoin gains amid growing investor concern over global banking crisis
Bitcoin advanced after a big rally in cryptocurrencies this week as the broader investment world assessed cracks in the banking system in the U.S. and Europe.
European Central Bank raises rates by another 50 basis points despite market turmoil
Some market players questioned whether President Christine Lagarde would proceed with a hike, given recent shocks in the banking sector.
Are there still some nice banking gains out there or did I miss the boat. I'm pissed I held onto my Oil stocks too long.
thank the fed, the dollar swap lines between fed and ecb are now over 500 billion!European Central Bank raises rates by another 50 basis points despite market turmoil
Some market players questioned whether President Christine Lagarde would proceed with a hike, given recent shocks in the banking sector.
I'm not informed enough to opine on SVB and Silvergate but found this that is food for thought from Anthony Pompliano:
To investors,
The past week has seen three banks shut down, including the second and third largest bank failures in United States history. This appears to be created by a bad economic situation on the surface, but there is a controversy brewing behind the curtain that I think is worth taking a look at.
As most of you know, I have the good fortune of speaking with many of the top venture capitalists and hedge fund managers on a weekly basis. Some of those interactions happen because of my investing activities, but a lot of them are a product of various topics I write about in this letter. I’ve found that it is worth exploring something if numerous people reach out about it, so that is what we are going to do today.
I want to start with Signature Bank, which was “shut down” on Sunday afternoon by the New York State Department of Financial Services. The mainstream narrative is that the bank was insolvent due to a bank run. This all happened after the $100+ billion deposit bank took too much risk through service of crypto clients. These talking points were repeated over and over again from various news outlets. For example, The New York Times headline reads “Risky Bet on Crypto and a Run on Deposits Tank Signature Bank.”
Sounds straight forward, right? Not so fast.
More information has come out and it appears that the bank may have been a target of political games. A lot of this information is being publicized by Barney Frank, the former Congressman who is famous for his banking regulation work that culminated in the Dodd-Frank Act after the 2008 Financial Crisis. Frank was a board member at Signature Bank and it seems like he has a very different perspective of what happened.
First, to understand the disagreement, it helps to find some common ground between Frank’s perspective and the NYDFS. Frank is adamant that Signature Bank was not insolvent and it appears that the NYDFS has avoided claiming that the bank was insolvent too. In an interview with Jen Wieczner of NY Mag, Barney Frank said the following when asked about the closing of the bank:
I’m very disappointed to learn, apparently, the Department of Financial Services in New York, which did the closing, hasn’t said we were insolvent! They said, well, they had a problem, because they couldn’t get sufficient data. I mean, I was disappointed when they closed it, and sort of vindicated — they have not argued that we were insolvent. And I think it’s very clear if we had the benefit of those two announcements, we’d still be an ongoing bank.
Now, the question is, why did they react so harshly to what they said was our inability to give them the sufficient data? I believe it was probably to send the message that even though we were doing crypto stuff responsibly, they don’t want banks doing crypto. They denied that in their statement, but I don’t fully believe that. I think that they overreacted to what they saw was our problem with data, which may well have existed, but the data was improving. I think sloppy data is not a reason to close a bank that you have not decided was insolvent, and they’ve never said we were insolvent.
Think about what Frank is saying here — the New York regulator helped to nationalize a federally regulated bank that was not insolvent, simply because they didn’t like who some of the bank’s customers were?? If that is true, this is a national scandal that would require a federal investigation into who made the decision, what their logic was, and whether it was legal or not.
Wieczner didn’t stop there in her questioning of Frank though. She explicitly asked him “I mean, is that even legal? Can the government just seize any bank, even if it’s not insolvent?” And Frank’s answer did not disappoint:
Well, that’s worrisome. Let me say this. I don’t want to comment on that personally, because as a director, I could be conceivably involved in any kind of lawsuit that anybody brought, but I think that is a very good question you raise. And particularly, somebody ought to look and see, I wonder, are we the first bank to be closed, totally, without being insolvent? And if so, why? I think the DFS, the state of New York people should have to answer that.
That’s why I speculate that using us as a poster child to say “stay away from crypto” was the reason.
I was speechless when I read this. We have a former Congressman, who is one of the harshest bank regulation experts in the world, who is questioning the legality of what the New York regulators just did. This gives me COVID lab leak vibes…sounds like a conspiracy theory at first, but the more you think independently, the more you start to believe there could be a much, much bigger story here.
This brings me to the next data point in our dive down the Signature Bank rabbit hole. Nic Carter eloquently pointed out that the “conspiracy theory” would have a lot more substance if the government forced the new owner of Signature Bank to shut down the bank’s crypto activity.
nic carter 🌠 @nic__carter
@jenwieczner One last thing, to determine whether this theory has legs. If another bank acquires SDNY and Signet is _not_ included in the package, it is clear that DFS took them down to take Signet (critical crypto infra) offline. Watch this part carefully.
11:21 PM ∙ Mar 15, 2023
331Likes21Retweets
Within hours, we received confirmation that this is exactly what is happening. David French wrote for Reuters that his sources confirmed “any buyer of Signature must agree to give up all the crypto business at the bank.”
I want to be careful not to make too many assumptions here, but this looks like the United States government nationalized a regulated financial institution with more than $100 billion in deposits in an effort to impose a political agenda on the market. Honestly, this is hard to fathom. Not something that you expect to happen in a country that claims to be the capital of democracy, capitalism, and rule of law.
Ok, let’s keep going further down this rabbit hole.
With the context of potentially questionable decisions around Signature Bank, we must now re-scrutinize the actions related to Silvergate Bank and Silicon Valley Bank. The consensus in these private conversations revolve around two big questions — why was Silvergate Bank pressured into fully paying off the $4.3 billion loan from the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco and why was a potential acquisition of Silicon Valley Bank blocked by regulators?
On the first question, many are wondering why Silvergate Bank paid back this multi-billion dollar advance early, which caused the run on the bank and ultimate liquidation of the company. Since there is not a clear explanation for why the bank would pay back the loan early, it has left people to speculate on a potential political pressure campaign that was done “off the record.” No one knows for sure. It will likely be impossible to get an actual answer from Silvergate or their executives. And the Federal Home Loan Bank spokesperson continues to reiterate that they did not request the early repayment. Your guess is as good as mine on this one.
On the second question of a Silicon Valley Bank acquisition being blocked, it is unclear why the regulators would not want a larger financial organization to step in to support a struggling institution. This would be better for equity and bond holders, while also probably better for depositors as well. Instead, the bank was nationalized in the short-term through placement in receivership, so now the government run process will rule the day.
To be clear, I don’t have answers for these questions. I don’t think anyone does at the moment. What appeared initially to be a few banks succumbing to financial stress, now looks like a potentially explosive scandal. Hopefully that is not the case, but if we have learned anything over the last three years — we must think independently and we must think critically during these moments.
Jake Chervinsky, the Chief Policy Officer at the Blockchain Association, confirmed this morning that the organization has “sent FOIA requests to the Fed, FDIC, and OCC, demanding information about the unlawful debanking of crypto companies.” My guess is that these types of requests will help us learn a lot more in the coming weeks and months. Maybe there is a smoking gun, maybe not. But it feels important that the American public gets answers either way.
The past week has seen three banks shut down, including the second and third largest bank failures in United States history. This appears to be created by a bad economic situation on the surface, but there is a controversy brewing behind the curtain that I think is worth taking a look at.
As most of you know, I have the good fortune of speaking with many of the top venture capitalists and hedge fund managers on a weekly basis. Some of those interactions happen because of my investing activities, but a lot of them are a product of various topics I write about in this letter. I’ve found that it is worth exploring something if numerous people reach out about it, so that is what we are going to do today.
I want to start with Signature Bank, which was “shut down” on Sunday afternoon by the New York State Department of Financial Services. The mainstream narrative is that the bank was insolvent due to a bank run. This all happened after the $100+ billion deposit bank took too much risk through service of crypto clients. These talking points were repeated over and over again from various news outlets. For example, The New York Times headline reads “Risky Bet on Crypto and a Run on Deposits Tank Signature Bank.”
Sounds straight forward, right? Not so fast.
More information has come out and it appears that the bank may have been a target of political games. A lot of this information is being publicized by Barney Frank, the former Congressman who is famous for his banking regulation work that culminated in the Dodd-Frank Act after the 2008 Financial Crisis. Frank was a board member at Signature Bank and it seems like he has a very different perspective of what happened.
First, to understand the disagreement, it helps to find some common ground between Frank’s perspective and the NYDFS. Frank is adamant that Signature Bank was not insolvent and it appears that the NYDFS has avoided claiming that the bank was insolvent too. In an interview with Jen Wieczner of NY Mag, Barney Frank said the following when asked about the closing of the bank:
I’m very disappointed to learn, apparently, the Department of Financial Services in New York, which did the closing, hasn’t said we were insolvent! They said, well, they had a problem, because they couldn’t get sufficient data. I mean, I was disappointed when they closed it, and sort of vindicated — they have not argued that we were insolvent. And I think it’s very clear if we had the benefit of those two announcements, we’d still be an ongoing bank.
Now, the question is, why did they react so harshly to what they said was our inability to give them the sufficient data? I believe it was probably to send the message that even though we were doing crypto stuff responsibly, they don’t want banks doing crypto. They denied that in their statement, but I don’t fully believe that. I think that they overreacted to what they saw was our problem with data, which may well have existed, but the data was improving. I think sloppy data is not a reason to close a bank that you have not decided was insolvent, and they’ve never said we were insolvent.
Think about what Frank is saying here — the New York regulator helped to nationalize a federally regulated bank that was not insolvent, simply because they didn’t like who some of the bank’s customers were?? If that is true, this is a national scandal that would require a federal investigation into who made the decision, what their logic was, and whether it was legal or not.
Wieczner didn’t stop there in her questioning of Frank though. She explicitly asked him “I mean, is that even legal? Can the government just seize any bank, even if it’s not insolvent?” And Frank’s answer did not disappoint:
Well, that’s worrisome. Let me say this. I don’t want to comment on that personally, because as a director, I could be conceivably involved in any kind of lawsuit that anybody brought, but I think that is a very good question you raise. And particularly, somebody ought to look and see, I wonder, are we the first bank to be closed, totally, without being insolvent? And if so, why? I think the DFS, the state of New York people should have to answer that.
That’s why I speculate that using us as a poster child to say “stay away from crypto” was the reason.
I was speechless when I read this. We have a former Congressman, who is one of the harshest bank regulation experts in the world, who is questioning the legality of what the New York regulators just did. This gives me COVID lab leak vibes…sounds like a conspiracy theory at first, but the more you think independently, the more you start to believe there could be a much, much bigger story here.
This brings me to the next data point in our dive down the Signature Bank rabbit hole. Nic Carter eloquently pointed out that the “conspiracy theory” would have a lot more substance if the government forced the new owner of Signature Bank to shut down the bank’s crypto activity.
nic carter 🌠 @nic__carter
@jenwieczner One last thing, to determine whether this theory has legs. If another bank acquires SDNY and Signet is _not_ included in the package, it is clear that DFS took them down to take Signet (critical crypto infra) offline. Watch this part carefully.
11:21 PM ∙ Mar 15, 2023
331Likes21Retweets
Within hours, we received confirmation that this is exactly what is happening. David French wrote for Reuters that his sources confirmed “any buyer of Signature must agree to give up all the crypto business at the bank.”
I want to be careful not to make too many assumptions here, but this looks like the United States government nationalized a regulated financial institution with more than $100 billion in deposits in an effort to impose a political agenda on the market. Honestly, this is hard to fathom. Not something that you expect to happen in a country that claims to be the capital of democracy, capitalism, and rule of law.
Ok, let’s keep going further down this rabbit hole.
With the context of potentially questionable decisions around Signature Bank, we must now re-scrutinize the actions related to Silvergate Bank and Silicon Valley Bank. The consensus in these private conversations revolve around two big questions — why was Silvergate Bank pressured into fully paying off the $4.3 billion loan from the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco and why was a potential acquisition of Silicon Valley Bank blocked by regulators?
On the first question, many are wondering why Silvergate Bank paid back this multi-billion dollar advance early, which caused the run on the bank and ultimate liquidation of the company. Since there is not a clear explanation for why the bank would pay back the loan early, it has left people to speculate on a potential political pressure campaign that was done “off the record.” No one knows for sure. It will likely be impossible to get an actual answer from Silvergate or their executives. And the Federal Home Loan Bank spokesperson continues to reiterate that they did not request the early repayment. Your guess is as good as mine on this one.
On the second question of a Silicon Valley Bank acquisition being blocked, it is unclear why the regulators would not want a larger financial organization to step in to support a struggling institution. This would be better for equity and bond holders, while also probably better for depositors as well. Instead, the bank was nationalized in the short-term through placement in receivership, so now the government run process will rule the day.
To be clear, I don’t have answers for these questions. I don’t think anyone does at the moment. What appeared initially to be a few banks succumbing to financial stress, now looks like a potentially explosive scandal. Hopefully that is not the case, but if we have learned anything over the last three years — we must think independently and we must think critically during these moments.
Jake Chervinsky, the Chief Policy Officer at the Blockchain Association, confirmed this morning that the organization has “sent FOIA requests to the Fed, FDIC, and OCC, demanding information about the unlawful debanking of crypto companies.” My guess is that these types of requests will help us learn a lot more in the coming weeks and months. Maybe there is a smoking gun, maybe not. But it feels important that the American public gets answers either way.
I think its pretty obvious all three were shut down because of their crypto and money laundering activities. Why did it take him so long to figure this out.
Also, he leaves out the money laundering investigation which is central to the story imo.
more and more states are banning crypto and people are surprised?
Barney Frank is a clown, the state acted before there was a run and not because of crypto however
There was news a few days back of 70B support from JPM and the Fed.
MS and others is new info and I think this also doesn't rule out the possibility of full takeover.
Here are more details.
A group of financial institutions are in talks to deposit roughly $20 billion in First Republic, sources told CNBC’s David Faber. The group includes Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and others, the sources said.
The deal is not done yet, the sources said. The plan does not call for any type of acquisition of First Republic. Other reports said the deposit boost could be as much as $30 billion.
Group of financial institutions in talks to deposit about $20 billion in First Republic, sources say
The news comes after First Republic's stock has been pummeled in recent days, sparked by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
This is where I'd be concerned about holding crypto on an exchange, any exchange at this point.
I was in meetings all morning with clients and didn't get a chance to sell FRC or close my options. Probably will get my $40 options called away, but not likely that my $65 options will get called away. Hopefully this thing really spikes next week.
The massive BTC run-up is nothing more than manipulation. It’s no safe haven. If there is serious reform coming due to recent bank BS, you can bet that crypto will somehow be right in the middle of it. Gov’t isn’t going to let people shift from banks to the biggest house of cards of all.
On a more interesting note, huge outflows from savings/checking accounts to MMs as people now question the point of leaving money to rot with no yield. That’s always been my approach as I only keep enough to cover my monthly bills in checking account. All my cash is with JPM and Fidelity MM.
Our sociopathic overlords are already trying to seed states with laws stealthily lay the foundations for CBDC. By changing certain commercial codes and banning crypto they want CBDC to drop and fit into place locked-in. Crypto would already be banned. Certain people work very hard to game any crisis (which they often help cause)
The states with most opposition to gov controlling people's money and spending are the targets of the manipulations. Christie Noem in South Dakota just vetoed a bill that banned crypto.
Noem vetoes bill that she says excludes crypto
The governor has put her veto on a fourth bill that the South Dakota Legislature approved in the 2023 session.
www.keloland.com
The Tyrants Are Passing State Laws to Push CBDCs
Let me open this by apologizing. This article is going to get into the weeds a bit and it is less than exciting. That said, stick with me until the end and I’ll give you a solution you can fight for. For those that are living under a rock (or that have more interesting things to do than follow...
tomrenz.substack.com
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