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Anybody Buying Yet? Where’s the Bottom?

Anyone looking to buy some of the larger more stable banks at this time? I am very intrigued looking at WFH, BAC, MTB, PNC, and even RF and KEY at these prices.

Going to be watching closely this week.
 
Yes it is. It will be interesting to see what happens on Monday. Seems like the Government wants to bail out the depositors. Roku had over $400 million deposited. That’s quite a generous bail out for a single company that obviously didn’t take precautions to keep its money safe. This will be extremely interesting to watch unfold.
 
Is this something finally breaking?
Who knows. Bank runs are completely emotion-driven events. There will be some great buying opportunities in some of these regionals, but when and which ones is hard to say. I don't think it is systemic. JPM, C, and WFC will be fine. I wonder if this kind of thing gets private equity investors to wake up and stop funding any idea that comes in the door (while I own DFLI, so yes I see the irony) when they see commitments get cut by 30% and some of these investment firms go under. Between Silvergate and SVB, we can conclude that specialty banks are

Current news
Fed opens discount window, so other banks can get cash.
FDIC pondering what level of depositors balance to save. Third-party bids on deposits have ranged from 50cents to 70cents.
Bitcoin up 4.5%, so the run on banks helping that asset?

Roku had over $400 million deposited. That’s quite a generous bail out for a single company that obviously didn’t take precautions to keep its money safe. This will be extremely interesting to watch unfold.
My only argument is you can't expect a company to have 1600 accounts at $250,000 each across various banks. Could have done a better job of risk management, but...
 
My only argument is you can't expect a company to have 1600 accounts at $250,000 each across various banks. Could have done a better job of risk management, but...
I agree. That number of accounts would not be sustainable on the accounting side. My point was more that it appears they held all their cash in a single bank in a single account. This may not be the case, but that is how the article conveyed it. Poor risk management was what I was trying to highlight. Easy to say after the bank failure, but that seems a bit egregious. Is it normal for companies to have hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in cash in a single bank?
 
Thought this was a succinct musing:


"The core problem is this: regulators can only protect so much of the financial system. Yet in a wealthy, peaceful economy the financial system often grows more rapidly than does gdp, if only because the financial system is based on the intermediation of wealth, not income. Simple accumulation boosts the ratio of wealth to income over time, thereby creating regulatory dilemmas for finance. Neither “regulating more and more of it” nor “letting more and more of it continue in a less regulated manner” are entirely satisfactory solutions.

But those of course are the only options available to us."
 
I agree. That number of accounts would not be sustainable on the accounting side. My point was more that it appears they held all their cash in a single bank in a single account. This may not be the case, but that is how the article conveyed it. Poor risk management was what I was trying to highlight. Easy to say after the bank failure, but that seems a bit egregious. Is it normal for companies to have hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in cash in a single bank?
Agree. Probably not normal to have that much cash at a single bank. The speed of this failure was unprecedented. Companies often have to move large sums of money to an account for payroll processing. When a bank collapses in 48hrs it is hard for them to not get caught offsides. It looks like FDiC said all deposits will be paid, so the point is moot.
Neither “regulating more and more of it” nor “letting more and more of it continue in a less regulated manner” are entirely satisfactory solutions.
I get where Cowen is going but I have two issues with some of it. One a small bank is more likely to have a concentrated depositor base, like SVB (although it wasn’t small) and a too-big-to-fail bank is going to be very diversified. The depositors acting at the same time to pull money is what caused the failure. Without that, SVB would be opening this morning without any problems. So I could easily argue we have too many banks.
Second, regulation here worked. The capital ratios and stress tests showed there was a problem. My complaint is the regulators let the bank do it anyway. The bank was poorly managed, but regulators have to have the power to stop a bad action. A 10yr or 30yr treasury may be classified as risk free for capital purposes, but as 2022 showed, it clearly isn’t risk free. You can’t let a bank get that mismatched on asset/liability tenures. I’m not sure how it happened.
 
Apparently there were lines outside some Bay-area First Republic branches on Saturday. FRC might have a rough Monday.

Had a friend that went there Saturday and waited 3 hours and couldn't get in. I recently moved most my business banking over to First Republic because of promotions with my payroll company. Payroll is due today.....good times.
 

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