Archive for September 2023

The Friday File: HGTV recently sold the circa-1959 LA house that served as the exterior of the Brady home on the TV series The Brady Bunch for $3.2 million. The home was purchased by HGTV for $3.5 million in 2018. The network “renovated” the home to match the interior of the 1969-1975 series. Talk about…

When loans go bad, rather than forcing the borrower into bankruptcy, lenders can do what is known as “extend and pretend” and hope that granting the borrower extra time helps the borrower regain solvency. Through 9/20/23 the number of such loan deals is almost 400. For the decade ending 2019 the number rarely exceeded 200…

After record for sale housing inventory lows in 2020, 2021, and 2022, 2023 started off weakly. In January through April 2023, for sale inventories were slightly above the record lows set in 2022. However, from May through August inventories set all-time lows, and by wide margins, making it likely monthly records will keep being set…

Since 1976, there have been 20 government closures. The average duration of the closures is eight days, but the median is just four days as many closures were three days or less. That said, contained within the last four closures are three of the four longest. This tells us that, of late, closures are getting…

While mergers and acquisition activity is wildly profitable for investment banks, earning them $13.1 billion in 23H1 fees, an influential 2011 Harvard Business Review article showed roughly 80% of merger and acquisitions failed to create buyer value. However, a recent study shows that since the global financial crisis of 2009/09, stock in $100+ million companies…

The Friday File: In 2009, Internet Explorer was the browser boss with a 65% market share, it’s now zero. Firefox was at 31% and today it’s at 3%, Apple’s Safari was at 2% and is now holding at 20%, and Google Chrome was at 1% but today is the standard-bearer with a stable 64% share.…

In early 2021 the Fed said inflation was transitory. That turned out to be true only if transitory is defined as two years, a bit long. Similarly, the Fed told us they expected the Fed funds rate to be 0.625% at the end of 2023, that’s a bit low since it’s now 5.375%. Now the…

Unsurprisingly, the Fed left Fed funds unchanged but signaled a willingness to possibly raise it 25bps in the future, a hawkish pause. However, it doesn’t matter if the Fed raises rates once more, or not. It stretches credulity to think inflation and the health of the economy hinge on 25bps. What matters is how long…

From 2/17 through 2/22, the percentage of pending home sales that fell out of contract declined from 13% to 11%, except for 3/20 and 4/20 when it exceeded 16%. From 3/22 through 9/22, as rates quickly rose, the failure rate jumped from 11% to over 16%. From 9/22 through 1/23, rates fell and the percentage…

Prior to the start of the September UAW strike, there were eight work stoppages involving more than a thousand people, the largest of which is the Screen Actors Guild strike involving 160,000 workers. Three of the eight stoppages began in August. The total amount of lost workdays because of these stoppages was 4.1 million, 0.11%…