BREAKING 🚨: U.S. Banks
Unrealized losses in the U.S. Banking System increased to $517 billion in Q1 Source: Barchart, BofA
Credit Agricole’s bond desk is targeted by climate activists
The French bank is under pressure to reveal the carbon footprint of its bond business. A group of investment managers with $777 billion in combined assets is using the bank’s AGM to demand that it start disclosing the greenhouse gas emissions tied to its capital markets operations.
Source: Bloomberg
JPMorgan Unveils IndexGPT in Next Wall Street Bid to Tap AI Boom.
The bank is creating thematic investment baskets using GPT-4 model. Trademark for name was filed last year, stirring speculation A year after a wave of speculation broke out over its application to trademark the word “IndexGPT” in connection to an unspecified artificial intelligence-powered tool, JPMorgan Chase & Co. is finally unveiling the product that will bear the name. IndexGPT is a new range of thematic investment baskets created with the help of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model. The tool generates a list of keywords associated with a theme, which are then fed into a separate natural language processing model that scans news articles to identify companies involved in the space. In essence, it’s a largely automated way to create so-called thematic indexes, which identify investments based on emerging trends — think cloud computing, e-sports or cybersecurity — rather than on traditional industry sectors or company fundamentals. Source: Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg
16 years of Mastercard vs Visa.
Both $MA (21.6%) and $V (20.9%) have remarkable CAGRs over that period. They have been pretty correlated throughout the period, taking over the world in unison. Source: Bloomberg, KoyfinCharts
European banks are apparently doing brilliant business in Russia…
In 2023, they paid 4 times more taxes to the Russian state than they did before the war in Ukraine... According to the FT, Deutsche Bank has increased its profits in Russia from €26mln before the war to €40mln in 2023, while Commerzbank has more than tripled its profits to €51mln. The German state holds a 15.8% stake in Commerzbank. Italian and Austrian banks are doing a killing as well… Western lenders have benefited from the imposition of sanctions on most of the Russian financial sector, which has denied access to the Swift international interbank payment system. That made international banks a financial lifeline between Moscow and the West. Source: FT, HolgerZ
US credit card delinquency rates are now at their highest on record, according to the Philadelphia Fed.
In Q4 2023, more credit card balances were 30+ and 60+ days past due compared to any other period in history. The percentage of credit card balances at least 30 days past due is now ~3.5%. Meanwhile, total credit card debt has skyrocketed in recent months and is now at a record $1.3 trillion. The average credit card interest rate is also at record 28%, according to Forbes. Source: The Kobeissi Letter
The largest US banks are set to earn higher profits than expected this year
As the Federal Reserve looks likely to make only modest cuts to benchmark interest rates. Source: FT
Credit card Rates Keep Climbing to Reach Unprecedented Levels
Source: Bloomberg
