Week Two: How COVID-19 Lockdowns Impact US Housing Market. Mortgages Give Clues: It Gets Uglier by Wolf Richter • Apr 1, 2020 • 169 Comments “Nobody has any taste for risk anymore. All of those exotic loan programs have ceased. All investors buying that paper are gone”: mortgage broker.
Foretaste of the Lockdown-Driven Collapse in the Services & Retail Sectors: Holy Moly, What a Catastrophic Mess by Wolf Richter • Mar 31, 2020 • 220 Comments Services account for 70% of the US economy. Here’s what’s happening to services and retail in economic powerhouse Texas.
Estimates About the Collapse of Share Buybacks Emerge by Wolf Richter • Mar 31, 2020 • 134 Comments “The leveraged share buyback game has ended, which also means an end to the phony earnings growth.”
Post-Lockdown New Normal: Many Brick & Mortar Stores Will Not Reopen, CMBS will Default, Mess to Ensue by Wolf Richter • Mar 30, 2020 • 245 Comments Neither the Fed nor the Treasury can bail out brick-and-mortar retailers.
How Will COVID-19 Impact US Manufacturing? First Indications Are Ugly. Exacerbated by Underlying Conditions by Wolf Richter • Mar 30, 2020 • 124 Comments Economic powerhouse Texas first got hit by the Oil Bust then by the Coronavirus. Expect similar confluence of unrelated factors in other regions.
How Will Coronavirus Lockdowns Impact the US Housing Market? First Data Points Are Out. They’re Ugly by Wolf Richter • Mar 25, 2020 • 223 Comments And it’s just the first inkling of what’s in store for home sales.
Four Mortgage REITs Collapse After Chaos Hit Markets for Residential & Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities by Wolf Richter • Mar 24, 2020 • 187 Comments In good Financial Crisis manner, stuff blows up despite the Fed’s effort to stem the chaos. Now hoping for taxpayer bailouts.
Share Buybacks Are Toast for 2020: Oops, that was the $4.6 Trillion Driver of the Stock-Market-Bubble by Wolf Richter • Mar 24, 2020 • 113 Comments Even after the bottom is perceived to be in, “buybacks may be slow to come back” as companies struggle for cash amid potential government restrictions on buybacks and their dismal public image: S&P Dow Jones Indices.
What Are All the Fed’s Corporate & Investor Bailout Programs and SPVs? Here’s the Whole Shitload of Them by Wolf Richter • Mar 23, 2020 • 232 Comments Indirectly via its Special Purpose Vehicles and its Primary Dealers, the Fed can buy even old bicycles, as long as taxpayers take the losses.
Leveraged Loans Blow Out. Distressed Corporate Debt Spikes by Wolf Richter • Mar 23, 2020 • 252 Comments This is the moment when yield-chasing turns into a massacre.
