Correspondent Blog

Research demonstrates that many companies do not sell their products or services evenly throughout the week, month, quarter, or year. Instead, in many industries, revenue and profit margins can fluctuate substantially throughout periods. It pays for community banks to not pay attention to this phenomenon in order to increase margins, but due to the vaccine,…

Negotiations over Stimulus 3.0 Begin With the inauguration behind us and with the Senate already busy confirming the first of President Biden’s Cabinet appointments, we’ll see if the Senate can walk and chew gum at the same time by taking up the $1.9 trillion Stimulus 3.0 package. Republicans are balking at the price tag but…

Equities hit record-highs yesterday on the belief that at least a good chunk of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package would become law. Those high water marks didn’t survive the day, however, as investors booked gains and a meandering day was the result, with Treasuries also not finding much traction. As for the stimulus proposal,…

The Horse-trading Over Stimulus 3.0 Begins Now that the Biden Stimulus Proposal is out the market will continue to assess what may get passed and how soon. The $1.9 trillion price tag certainly was higher than most estimates and Treasuries initially rallied on the assumption that the hefty price might find some Democratic senators balking…

President-elect Joe Biden unveiled a stimulus package last night that could exceed $1.9 trillion. The first part of the package is characterized as rescue items intended to provide lifelines for struggling families and help for minority communities. Headlining the package are $1,400 stimulus checks, an expansion of the child tax care credit, extended unemployment benefits,…

Credit is always changing, and CenterState watches a variety of markers such as corporate bond credit spreads, vacancy rates, net effective rents and many others in order to help us understand credit. Three of those important credit metrics are the probability of default (POD) by industry, the rate of change of that POD, and the…

As shown in the graph below, we may be witnessing the end of a multi-decade bull run in bonds.  After many decades of decline, interest rates may be on the rise for years to come.  This development is creating an opportunity for community banks to book longer-term fixed-rate loans with higher profit margins.  However, borrower…

Given the events of last Wednesday, we hope 2021 didn’t just tell 2020, “hold my beer”, but in the Treasury market good times are certainly being priced in. Long-end Treasury yields have risen every day in this young year, until yesterday. Driving that increase is the expectation that the Heroes Act will contribute to growth…

Politics Driving Markets With the elections finally settled in our federal government, we think,  investors are now trading around the idea of a unified Democratic government and all that that means. First, a third stimulus bill seems the first order of business with the $2,000 stimulus checks front and center. Both new Democratic Senators Ossoff…

  Economic News The December Employment Report is out and it missed the headline expectation of 50 thousand new jobs with a notable decline of 140 thousand, the first decline since April. Partially offsetting that was a 135 thousand upward revision to the prior two months. The private sector saw 95 thousand jobs cut versus…

The results of the twin Senate runoffs in Georgia were as close as advertised but Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock has been declared the winner in his race while Democrat Jon Ossoff is leading by 16,000 votes in his race with 98% of the vote counted. His lead over David Perdue is less than 0.5% so…

Georgia Elections and Jobs As a new year opens, investors will be fixated on the political once again. First, the Georgia senatorial run-off election concludes tomorrow but the closeness of the polls indicates it may be Wednesday or later before we know the final results. A win by one or both Republicans will keep that…