Correspondent Blog

Stimulus 3.0 and February Jobs Report With the House having passed it’s version of Stimulus 3.0 on Friday, Senate Democrats look set to take up their version this week. One issue that will have to be addressed between the two bills is the minimum wage provision. It is in the House bill but the Senate…

In the past (HERE), we highlighted how an employee handbook can have a colossal impact on culture that can radically alter your bank’s trajectory. We talked about how culture alone allowed Zingerman’s, a little Michigan deli, to have a worldwide following. We showed employee handbook examples from Netflix, Zappos and Nordstrom to demonstrate how their…

The February bludgeoning in the Treasury market continued yesterday with yearly highs set in the 10-year (1.61%) and the 30-year (2.39%). The 5-year joined the party yesterday leaping 26bps in one day to 0.86%, but that’s 30bps short of the yearly high of 1.16% set exactly one year ago today. Yields came off those mid-day…

Fed Chair Jerome Powell delivered an as expected performance yesterday in his virtual testimony before the Senate Banking Committee. Don’t expect any changes in rates or QE purchases anytime this year, and maybe next year too. Powell emphasized in the Q&A that the labor market is worse than official statistics imply. For example, when including…

A tool that every banker should have at their disposal is the ability to figure out what a statistically valid sample size is from a given population (calculator at the bottom). A simple everyday example is in the case where examiners are coming in and you want to be sure all your wires are BSA…

If you’re a bank that keeps a loan pipeline report, chances are you have some excellent data that will form the basis of making your bank more efficient. Of the key performance indicators (KPI), tracking length of time to close, approval rates, fall out rates and lost rates are likely on the top of your…

Senate Returns to Work on Stimulus 3.0 After a one week hiatus, or vacations to Cancun, the Senate will take full aim at the Biden Administration’s proposed $1.9 trillion Stimulus 3.0 package.  With memories of the trimmed down Obama 2009 stimulus package still fresh in many Democrats’ minds, expect them to go it alone and…

With little in the way of material economic releases to disturb the market,  price action in Treasuries will be the story in itself.  All eyes have been on the 10-Year note as it jumped out of the gate on Tuesday following the long weekend and posted a weekly high of 1.33%, and nearly the highest…

Why do some banks grind it out and struggle to produce a 9% return on equity (“ROE”), while other banks such as Bank of America and Chase produce 20% plus ROE for the same business segment? One answer is that banks that produce an above-average ROE either have a more profitable customer segment focus, more…

January is typically a slow month for loan production at community banks, and the pandemic-hampered economy made the month even more challenging for many banks. The data from the Federal Reserve’s H.8 report showed that all loans were essentially flat in January for banks. For January, for small domestically chartered commercial banks (defined as not…

Treasury yields have moved to near yearly highs with the usual suspects being inflation fears, improving virus/vaccine outlook, and the coming of Stimulus 3.0. One of the tenets in the improving virus/vaccine outlook is that it will drive a rebound in consumer spending and with two-thirds of the economy based on consumer consumption an improving…

  Yields on the Move Again 10-year Treasury yields moved over 1.25% in the early morning hours without any particular reason. After taking down supply last week in a fairly easy manner, some consolidating around the upper teen range was seen as likely but the move this morning has to be respected. Technically speaking, 1.27%…