Archives

Here, at your fingertips, are more than 40 years’ worth of issues and articles. Search by date, company or keyword.

1991
All Years 2025 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 1986 1985 1984 1983
Company
All Companies 3Com Corp. 3M Co Aaron’s Inc. Abertis Infraestructuras Abitibi Consolidated Inc. Absolute Invest Ltd. Absolute Private Equity Accelerate Diagnostics Access Flex Bear High Yield fund Accuride Corporation Ackerman & van Haaren Actavis plc. Adams Natural Resources Fund Inc. Adecoagro S.A. Advanced Micro Devices AdvisorShares Ranger Equity Bear ETF AerCap Holdings NV AES Corp. Aetna Affirm Holdings, Inc. Africa Opportunity Fund Agco Corp. AGNC Investment Corp. Agnico-Eagle Mines Aioi Insurance Airbnb, Inc. Airborne Freight Corp. AK Steel Holding Corp Akamai Technologies Akenerji Elektrik Uretim A.S. Alaska Milk Albermarle Corp. Alcoa Alexander & Baldwin Alibaba Group Holding Ltd Alleghany Corp. Allergan Inc. Alliance Holdings GP Alliance Resource Partners LP AllianceBernstein Income Fund Allied Capital Corp. Allison Transmission Holdings Inc. Allos S.A. Alon USA Altice N.V. Altria Group Amazon.com Ambac American Banknote Holographics American Electric Power American Greetings Corp. American International Group, Inc. Ameriprise Financial Ameritrade Holding Corp. AMR Corp. Amrep Corp. AMVIG Holdings Anglo American Platinum Ltd. Anglo American Plc. Anglogold Anheuser-Busch InBev S.A./N.V. Annaly Capital Management Antero Midstream Partners L.P. Anthracite Capital Antofagasta Holdings AP Alternative Assets LP Aperam S.A. Apex Mortgage Capital Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance Inc Apollo Global Management AppFolio, Inc. Apple, Inc. Aradigm Corp. Aramark ArcelorMittal Arch Capital Group, Ltd. Arch Coal Arcos Dorados Holdings Inc. Ares Capital Corp. Ares Management Corp. Arkema Arrow Global Group plc. Artemis Alpha Trust Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. Ascena Retail Group Ashtead Group plc Asia Pulp & Paper Co. Asset Acceptance Capital Corp. AT&T Inc. athenahealth Atlas Mara Co-Nvest Ltd. ATP Oil & Gas Corp. Atrium European Real Estate Ltd. Atwood Oceanics Aurora Investment Trust plc Australia & New Zealand Banking Group AutoNation, Inc. AutoZone Avance Gas Holding Avianca Holdings SA Avid Technology Inc. Avon Products Axis Capital Holdings Azul S.A. B3 S.A. - Brasil Bolsa Balcao Babcock & Wilcox Co. Badger Meter, Inc. Ball Corp. Banca Carige S.p.A Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA Banco Bradesco S.A. Banco de Chile Bancolombia SA Bank of America Bank of Greece Bank of New York Mellon Bank of Nova Scotia Bank of Queensland Banque Nationale de Belgique Barclays PLC Barrick Gold BASF SE Bayerische Motoren Werke AG BB&T Corp. Bear Stearns Beazer Becton Dickinson and Co. Beijing Capital International Airport Berkshire Hathaway Inc-Cl A Berry Global Group, Inc. Best Buy BFF Bank SpA BHP Billiton BHP Billiton Ltd. Bitcoin Investment Trust BJ’s Wholesale Club BlackRock BlackRock AAA CLO BlackRock California Municipal Income Trust BlackRock MuniHoldings New York Quality Fund BlackRock MuniYield Michigan Quality Fund Blackrock MuniYield New York Quality Fund BlackRock MuniYield Pennsylvania Quality Fund Blackrock MuniYield Quailty Fund BlackRock Taxable Municipal Bond Trust Blackstone Group L.P. Blackstone Mortgage Trust Blackstone/GSO Senior Floating Rate Term Fund Blackstone/GSO Strategic Credit Fund Bladex S.A. Blount International Inc. Blue Sky Alternative Investments Ltd. BNP Paribas Boardwalk Pipeline Partners Boeing BOK Financial Boulder Brands British American Tobacco Plc. Brookfield Property Partners, LP Builders FirstSource, Inc. Bunge Ltd. Burger King Worldwide BW LPG C&J Energy Services Inc. C.B. Richard Ellis Cabot Oil & Gas Cairn Energy Cairn India Ltd. Calamos Convertible Fund Calavo Growers Calpine Corp. Cameco Cameco Corporation Campbell Soup Co. Canadian Apartment Properties Real Estate Investment Trust Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce Canadian National Railway Co. Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. Capital & Counties Properties plc Capital One Financial Corp. Capstead Mortgage Corp. Carlyle Group CarMax Inc. Carnival Cruise Lines Carrefour S.A. Carter’s Inc. Carvana Co. Casella Waste Systems, Inc. Casino Guichard Perrachon SA Castle Private Equity AG Catalyst Biosciences, Inc. Caterpillar CBL & Associates Properties CBRL Group Celgene Corp. Central Securities Corp. Ceradyne Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. Charles Schwab Charter Communications Chevron Corp. Chimera Investment China Cinda Asset Management Co. China Coal Energy Co. China Construction Bank China Evergrande Group China International Travel Service Corp Ltd China National Chemical Corp. China Shenhua Mining China Vanke Christopher & Banks Corp. Chuck E. Cheese Brands Inc. CIT Group Citigroup Clean Energy Fuels Corp. Clean Harbors, Inc. Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. Clorox Co. CME Group CNA Financial Corp. CNH Global N.V. CNX Gas CNX Resources Corp. Coca-Cola Co. Coca-Cola Icecek A.S. Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp. Coface S.A. Comcast Corp. Comerica Commercial Metals Co. Commonwealth Bank of Australia Companhia Vale do Rio Doce CompuCredit Holdings Corp. Comverse Technology Con-way ConAgra Foods Concentradora Fibra Danhos SA de CV Concentradora Fibra Hotelera Mexicana SA de CV Conn’s Inc. CONSOL Energy Consolidated-Tomoka Land Co. Constellation Software Inc. Contura Energy Inc. Conversus Capital Copart, Inc. Copperbelt Energy Corp plc CoreSite Realty Corp. Coronado Biosciences Corporate Travel Management Ltd. CoStar Group, Inc. Costco Wholesale Countryside Properties plc Countrywide Credit Industries Cousins Properties Inc. Credicorp Ltd. Credit Suisse Group CreXus Investment Corp. CrossingBridge Low Duration High Yield Fund CSX Corp. Cullen/Frost Bankers Cummins Inc. Customers Bancorp, Inc. CVS Caremark Cyxtera Technologies, Inc. Daishi Bank Danske Bank A/S De La Rue plc Deere & Co. Delek Logistics Partners L.P. Dell Computer Delta Air Lines Destination Maternity Detour Gold Corp. Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank A.G. Deutsche High Income Opportunities Fund Deutsche High Income Trust Devon Energy Dex One Corporation Diamant Art Corp. Diamond Foods Inc. Diamond Resorts International Digital Realty Trust, Inc. DineEquity Dish Network Corp. Dixons Carphone plc Dogan Gazetecilik A.S. Dole Food Dollar General Dollar Tree, Inc. Dorian LPG Ltd. Dorman Products DoubleLine Income Solutions Dow Chemical Downey Financial Corp. Duke Realty Corp. Eagle Bulk Shipping Inc. Eagle Point Credit Co. Inc. Eaton Vance Municipal Bond Fund Eaton Vance New York Municipal Bond Fund Eaton Vance Senior Income Trust ECA Marcellus Trust I El Paso Pipeline Partners Electrobras S.A. Eli Lilly & Co. Ellie Mae Inc. Emerald Oil, Inc. Emerson Electric Co. Emmis Communications Corp. Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones SA, ENTEL Enbridge, Inc. Endo International Plc Energias de Portugal SA ENI S.p.A Ensco plc. Enstar Group Ltd. Enterprise Products Partners L.P. EOG Resources Epicor Software Corporation Equinox Gold Corp. Equitable Group Inc. Equity Commonwealth Esquire Financial Holdings, Inc. ETRACS Fisher-Gartman Risk off ETN ETRACS Fisher-Gartman Risk on ETN Euronav NV European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. European Wax Center, Inc. Everbridge Inc. Evercore Partners Inc. Everest Group Ltd. Evotec S.E. Exide Technologies Exor SpA Expedia Experience Investment Corp. ExxonMobil Facebook FactSet Research Systems Fairfax Financial Holdings Fairfax India Holdings Corp. Fairway Group Holdings Fannie Mae Farmer Mac Farmland Partners Inc. Fastenal Co. FedEx Corp. Fiat S.p.A. Fibra Uno Fidelity & Guaranty Life Fidelity National Financial Fidelity National Information Services, Inc, Fifth Street Finance Corp. Fifth Street Senior Floating Rate Corp. Financial Engines First Eagle Global Fund First Eagle Gold Fund First Financial Bancorp. First Western Financial, Inc. FirstFed Financial Corp. Fisker Inc. Fleetwood Corp. Flowserve Corp. Fluor Corp. Fondual Proprietatea Ford Forest City Enterprises Forestar Group Fortescue Metals Group Ltd. Fortress Investment Group Fortress REIT Ltd. Fosun International Ltd. Foundation Coal Holdings Franco-Nevada Franklin Resources Fred. Olsen Energy ASA Freddie Mac Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Freescale Semiconductor Fresh Del Monte Produce Fresnillo Frontier Communications Corp. Frontline Ltd. FTSE/Xinhau China 25 Index FXCM Inc. G5 Entertainment A.B. Gannett GATX Corporation Gazprom OAO Genco Shipping & Trading Limited General Cable Corp. General Electric General Mills, Inc. General Motors General Shopping Brasil S.A. Genesee & Wyoming Inc Ginebra San Miguel Inc. Glatfelter Corp. Glencore PLC Global X Uranium ETF Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes S.A. Gold Fields Ltd. Gold Reserve Act of 1934 Goldcorp Goldcorp Inc. Goldman Sachs Group Golub Capital Goodrich Petroleum Google Great Northern Iron Ore Properties Greenbrier Companies Greencore Group plc Greenhill & Co. Greggs plc Greif Inc. Gresham House Strategic plc GrubHub Inc. Grupo Financiero Galicia Grupo Nutresa SA Gunes Sigorta A.S. GungHo Online Entertainment, Inc. H&R Real Estate Investment Trust Haier Co. Ltd. Halcon Resources Hallador Energy Co. Halliburton Co. Hamilton Lane, Inc. Hancock Holding Co. Hanesbrands Inc. Hang Seng Bank Ltd Hannon Armstrong Sustainable Infrastructure Capital, Inc. HarbourVest Harman International Hatteras Financial Corp HC2 Holdings Inc. Heartland BancCorp Heartland Value Fund Hecla Mining Co. HEICO Corp. HeidelbergCement A.G. Helen of Troy Ltd. Hercules Capital Inc. Hermes International Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. Hewlett-Packard Hochschild Mining Holding Bursatil Regional S.A. Home Capital Group Home Depot HomeAway Honam Petrochemical Horizon Kinetics Inflation Beneficiaries ETF Horsehead Holding Corp Horsehead Holding Corp., Hospira Howard Hughes Corp. Hudson Pacific Properties Inc. Humana Inc. Hunter Douglas Huntington Bancshares Hyundai Motor Hyundai Motor Co., preferred IBM Icahn Enterprises L.P. ICICI Bank Iconix Brand Group Infosys Innovative Industrial Properties, Inc. InRetail Peru Corp. Intel Corp. Intelsat SA Intercontinental Exchange Interest Rate Volatility and Inflation Hedge ETF International Bancshares Corp. International Paper International Seaways, Inc. Intesa Sanpaolo SpA Inversiones y Representaciones S.A. Invesco Senior Loan ETF Invesco Value Municipal Income Trust Investment Quality Municipal Trust Invitation Homes, Inc. Iron Mountain, Inc. Ironwood Pharmaceuticals iShares Floating Rate Bond ETF iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond Fund iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond Fund iShares International Treasury Bond ETF iShares J.P. Morgan EM Local Currency Bond ETF iShares JP Morgan U.S. Dollar Emerging Markets Bond ETF iShares National Muni Bond ETF iShares New York Muni Bond ETF iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF iShares Silver Trust iShares TIPS Bond ETF iShares Treasury Floating Rate Bond ETF Isis Pharmaceuticals iStar Financial IWG, PLC J.B. Hunt Transport Services J.C. Penney J.G. Wentworth Inc. J.P. Morgan Chase Janus Henderson AAA CLO Jazz Pharmaceuticals PLC JB Hi-Fi Ltd. JBG Smith Properties Jefferies Group John B. Sanfilippo & Son, Inc. Johnson & Johnson Joy Global JPMorgan Emerging Europe, Middle East and Africa Securities plc JZ Capital Partners Kala Pharmaceuticals Inc. Kansas City Southern KapStone Paper and Packaging Corp. Kazatomprom GDS KBR Inc. Kerry Group plc Keryx Biopharmaceuticals Keurig Green Mountain Keycorp Kilroy Realty Corp. Kimberly-Clark Kinder Morgan Energy Partners Kinder Morgan Inc. Kinetic Concepts Kinetsu Corp. Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. KKR & Co. LP Klondex Mines Knight Capital Group Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings Kohl’s Corp. Kone OYJ Koninklijke Philips N.V. Koppers Holdings Korean Preferred Stocks Kraft Heinz Co Kroger Co. Kulicke & Soffa Lancaster Colony Corp. LandAmerica Financial Group Lanxess Lawson Software Lazard Ltd. Legg Mason Value Leggett & Platt Lehman Brothers Lemonade, Inc. LendingClub Lennar Corp. Lennox International, Inc. Leo Holdings Corp. LifeLock Ligand Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Light S.A. Lincoln National Corp. LinkedIn Corp. Linn Energy Lithia Motors, Inc. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. Lloyds Banking Group LOccitane International S.A. Lockheed Martin Corp. Loews Corp. Loma Negra Companía Industrial Argentina S.A. Lordstown Motors Corp. Lowes Companies Lufkin Industries Lukoil OAO Lumber Liquidators Holdings Luminar Technologies Inc. Luxottica M&T Bank Mack-Cali Realty Corp. Macquarie Group Limited Macy’s Inc. Manitowoc Co. MannKind Corp. Manulife Financial Market Vectors Agribusiness ETF Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF Market Vectors Russia ETF MarketAxess Holdings Inc. Marks & Spencer plc Marmara Capital Equity Fund Martin Marietta Materials Inc. MasTec Inc. Mastech Holdings Matthews International Corp. MBIA Inc. McDermott International McDonald’s Corp. MCG Capital Corp. mdf commerce, Inc. Medallion Financial Corp. Medtronic Merck & Co. Merrill Lynch Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Meta Platforms, Inc. Metal Constructions of Greece (Metka) Methanex Corp MetLife Metropolitan West Low Duration Bond Fund MF Global holdings MFA Financial Inc. MGIC Investment Corporation MGM Energy Michael Kors Holdings Microsoft Microsoft Corp. Midas Gold Corp. Middleby Corp. Millicom International Cellular Minefinders Mister Car Wash, Inc. Mitsubishi Corp. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Moderna, Inc. Moelis & Co. Mohawk Industries, Inc. Molson Coors Brewing Company Monadelphous Group Mondelez International Inc. Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corporation Monsanto Co. Moody's Corp. Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley China Morgan Stanley Emerging Markets Domestic Debt Fund Mosaic Company Moscow Exchange MPLX LP MSC Industrial Direct Co. Mueller Industries, Inc. Muzinich Low Duration Fund MVC Capital Mytilineos Holdings Nanto Bank Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF Index Natco Group National Australia Bank National City Bank National Commercial Bank National Oilwell Varco National Retail Properties Natural Resource Partners, L.P. Nautical Petroleum plc Navios Maritime Partners, L.P. Nestle SA Netflix Inc. Nevsun Resources New Fortress Energy LLC New Gold New Providence Acquisition Corp. Newcrest Mining Ltd. Newfield Exploration Newmont Mining Nielsen Holdings plc Nike Nikola Corp. Nintendo Co., Ltd. Nippon Active Value Fund Nissay Dowa General Insurance Noble Corp. plc Norcros plc Nordea Bank AB Nordic American Tankers Ltd. Nordstrom Norfolk Southern Corp North Atlantic Drilling Ltd. Northern Dynasty Minerals Northern Trust Corp Northgate Minerals NovaGold Resources Novus Capital Corp. NOW Inc Nucor Corporation Nuveen Build America Bond Fund Nuveen Build America Bond Opportunity Fund Nuveen Floating Rate Income Fund Nuveen New York AMT-Free Municipal Income Fund Nuveen New York Dividend Advantage Municipal Fund Nuveen North Carolina Quality Municipal Income Fund Nuverra Environmental Solutions Nvidia Corp. NVR Inc. Nyrstar Oasis Petroleum Inc. Occidental Petroleum Corporation Ocean Bio Chem Ocean Rig UDW Oculus Innovative Sciences Okomu Oil Palm Plc Olin Corp. Ollie’s Bargain Outlet Holdings Inc. Omega Healthcare Investors, Inc. On Deck Capital Oneok, Inc. Opko Health Orezone Resources Orient Overseas International Ormat Technologies, Inc. Osisko Mining Corp. Owens-Illinois Oxford Lane Capital Corp. Oxford Square Capital Co. Packaging Corp. of America Pactiv Corp. PacWest Bancorp Pakuwon Jati Tbk PT Palm Valley Capital Fund Pan American Silver Par Pacific Holdings Paragon Offshore Paramount Global Paramount Resources Ltd. Parapet 2006 Paris Orleans SA Parkway Inc. Parsley Energy Inc. Partners Group Holding A.G. Party City Holdco Inc. PDL BioPharma Peabody Energy Corp. Peapack-Gladstone Financial Corp. Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust PepsiCo Permanent TSB Group Holdings plc Petroleo Brasileiro SA PG&E Corp. Pharmaceutical Product Development PHH Corp. Phillip Morris International, Inc. Phillips 66 Pico PIMCO Dynamic Credit Income Fund Ping An Bank Co. Ping An Insurance Group Co. Pioneer Natural Resources Co. Plum Creek Timber Plus500 Ltd. PNC Financial Services Popular, Inc. Post Holdings Inc. Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Potlatch Corp. Power Finance Corporation PowerShares DB G10 Currency Harvest Fund PowerShares Variable Rate Preferred Portfolio ETF Prada SpA Precision Castparts Corporation Pretium Resources Principal Financial Group Procter & Gamble Progress Energy Resources Progressive Corp. Prologis Inc. Property REIT, Inc. Prosensa Holding ProShares UltraShort Lehman 20+ Treasury Prospect Capital Corp. Prosperity Bancshares Provident Bancorp, Inc. Public Storage Puregold Price Club Inc. PutleGroup Qualcomm Inc. QuantumScape Corp. Quest Diagnostics Quicksilver Rackspace Hosting Radian Group RadioShack Corp Raiffeisen International Ralcorp Holdings Inc. Range Resources Rayonier Inc. Raytheon Co. Realogy Holdings Corp. Realty Income Corp. Redrow plc Redwood Trust Regions Financial Regis Resources Ltd. Reis Inc. Reliance Industries Ltd. Renewi plc Repros Therapeutics Republic Services Inc. Research in Motion Resolute Energy Restaurant Brands International Inc. Restoration Hardware Holdings Richemont SA Rio Tinto Ltd. Rite Aid Rollins, Inc. Rosneft OAO Rowan Companies Royal Bank of Scotland Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. RWE AG Ryohin Keikaku Co., Ltd. S.A., Public Power Corp SA des Ciments Vicat Salvatore Ferragamo SpA Samsara, Inc. Samsung C&T Corp. Samsung Electronics Sangamo BioSciences Santander Consumer USA Sarepta Therapeutics Sberbank Schindler Holding AG Schlumberger N.V. Schweitzer-Mauduit International SCOR SE Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. Seacor Holdings Seadrill Ltd. Sears Holdings SemGroup Corp. Service Corp. International Shake Shack Inc. Shaw Group Shell plc Sherwin-Williams Ship Finance International Ltd. Shizuoka Bank Sichuan Expressway Signature Bank Signet Jewelers Ltd. Sime Darby Simon Property Group Simplify Downside Interest Rate Hedge Strategy ETF Simplify Interest Rate Hedge ETF Simplify MBS ETF Singapore Airlines Sino Gold Mining SK Square Co., Ltd. SL Green Realty Corp SLR Investment Corp. SM Prime Holdings, Inc. Smithfield Foods Snap-on Inc. Societe Generale Societe Internationale de Plantations et de Finance SoftBank Group Corp. SolarCity Corp. Sotheby's Southern National Bancorp of Virginia Southwest Airlines Southwestern Energy SPDR Barclays Capital High Yield Bond SPDR Bloomberg Barclays Investment Grade Floating Rate ETF SPDR Gold Shares Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc. Springleaf Holdings Sprint Corp. Sprott Gold Equity Fund Sprott Inc. Sprott Physical Gold and Silver Trust Sprott Physical Gold Trust Sprouts Farmers Market Square Inc. St. Joe Company STAG Industrial Starboard Value Acquisition Corp. Starwood Property Trust State Street Corp. Steel Dynamics Sterling Infrastructure Co., Inc. Strongbridge Biopharma plc. Sumitomo Mitusi Financial Suncor Energy Inc. Sunrun Inc. Suntech Power Holding SunTrust Banks SuperMedia Surgutneftegas SVB Financial Group Swiss National Bank Syneron Medical Ltd. Syngenta AG T.Rowe Price Group Tahoe Resources Target Corp. Tata Motors Ltd. Tattooed Chef Inc. TCW Total Return Bond Teck Resources Teekay Tankers, Ltd. Tegna, Inc. Tejon Ranch Company Templeton Emerging markets Income Fund Templeton Global Income Fund Teranga Gold Tesco plc Tesla Motors Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. Texas Capital Bancshares Texas Pacific Land Trust Texas Roadhouse, Inc. TGR Financial , Inc. TGS ASA The Bancorp, Inc. The Fresh Market The Intertain Group Ltd. The Korea Fund, Inc. The Williams Companies, Inc. THL Credit ThyssenKrupp A.G. TICC Capital Corp. Tidewater Inc. Tiffany & Co. Tile Shop Holdings Time Warner Cable Tocqueville Gold Fund Tosoh Corp. Tourmaline Oil Corp. Tower Hill Mines Ltd. TransDigm Group Inc. Transocean Ltd. Transportadora de Gas del Sura SA Treasury Wine Estates Trex Co., Inc. Trinity Industries Triple Flag Precious Metals Corp. Tupperware Brands Turkish Airlines Turkiye Garanti Bankasi A.S. U.S. Bancorp U.S. Filter Uber Technologies, Inc. UBS UBS AG Ultra Petroleum UltraShort FTSE/ Xinhau China 25 Proshare Under Armour Unifi Union Pacific Corp. United Company Rusal United Continental Holdings United Rentals Inc. United Technologies Unum Group Uranium Participation Corp. Valeant Pharmaceuticals International VanEck Gold Miners ETF VanEck Vectors AMT-Free Long Municipal Index ETF Vanguard Value ETF Vapor Corp. Verizon Communications Vermilion Energy, Inc. Viad Corp. Viking Therapeutics, Inc. Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. Vistra Corp. Vistry Group plc Vodafone Group Vornado Realty Trust W.R. Berkley Corp. W.W. Grainger Wal-Mart de Mexico SAB de CV Wal-Mart Stores Walgreen Walt Disney Co. Walter Investment Management Corp Warby Parker, Inc. Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. Wasatch Small Cap Value Fund Wasatch-Hoisington U.S. Treasury Fund Washington Federal Washington Mutual Inc. Waste Connections Waste Management Weiss Korea Opportunity Fund Wells Fargo & Company Wells Fargo Short-Term Municipal Bond Fund Class A Wendy’s Werner Enterprises, Inc. Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd. West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. Western Alliance Bancorporation Western Asset Emerging Markets Debt Fund Western Asset Global Corporate Defined Opportunity Fund Western Asset High Income Opportunity Fund Western Asset High Yield Defined Opportunity Fund Western Digital Corp. Western Refining Western Union Company Westfield Group Westlake Chemical Corp. Westlake Chemical Partners LP Westpac Banking Corp. Westshore Terminals Weyerhaeuser Corp. Whirlpool Corp White Mountains Insurance Group Whole Foods Market Williams-Sonoma Windstream Holdings WisdomTree Dreyfus Brazilian Real WisdomTree Dreyfus Chinese Yuan WisdomTree Dreyfus Indian Rupee Woodford Patient Capital Trust plc Wright Medical XTO Energy Yahoo! Yamana Gold Yandex NV YPF S.A. Yum! Brands Inc. Zillow, Inc. Zion Oil & Gas Inc. Zoomlion

December 20, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 24

Buy Issue PDF
GMAC on the spot

General Motors Acceptance Corp.'s commercial paper is trading as if Moody's and Standard & Poor's had already lowered the ratings boom.

No upside

The announced merger of the two big California banks, BankAmerica Corp. and Security Pacific Corp., will probably happen but it will not certainly happen. The merger depends on regulatory and shareholder approval and other considerations...

Betting the store

Mall of America is America's mall and America's newest financial laboratory.

Store of value

Proof that all is not lost in gold was provided by United Press International last Friday...

Trillion-dollar 'bet'

What is your nomination for the biggest surprise of 1992? A Federal Reserve-induced rise in interest rates? It is almost beyond imagining.

1-800-NO-WAY-AL

Purely by coincidence, more credit-related news has broken literally yards from Mall of America's front porch....

What the numbers mean

More than one reader has asked: What in the world is the centerfold for? What do the numbers mean? Do you obtain them from reliable sources or make them up?... These are great and weighty questions, and we will begin at the beginning, with the Federal Reserve balance sheet...

Rumors swirl

Money-center bank stocks fell on Tuesday amid rumors and facts.

December 6, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 23

Buy Issue PDF
Money supply: Where could it be.

The man on the pre-dawn radio news Monday speculated that the $5.2 billion rise in M-2 last week was so unexpectedly large that it might forestall the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates again.

Intercontinental shrink

For understandable reasons, American finance is usually preoccupied with America, but the symptoms of debt contraction are evident in more and more foreign countries.

Agony of cash

In full flight from 4% money-market yields and the specter of 3% money-market yields, investors have re-embraced junk bonds.

Tough guys ascendant

William M. McGarr, general partner of the McGarr Fund, fast friend, paid-up subscriber and early proponent of the now-popular idea that joblessness in the service sector is one of the distinguishing characteristics of this weird recession. So when McGarr offered to interpret the meaning of a new cover of Business Week, we eagerly listened.

Tired blood

The trouble with the U.S. economy, contends the consulting economist Peter L. Bernstein, is not the recession. It is the preceding expansion -- indeed, a whole string of preceding expansions. For decades, the economy has suffered a progressive loss of oomph.

Window on retailing

The business climate is even more peculiar than it is frigid.

Active lender reports

David Gladstone, president of Allied Capital, the Washington (D.C.)based venture-capital and business-credit firm, has a 50-yard-line seat on the domestic credit contraction.

Dawn of 3%

No fewer than 12 funds listed in the Barron's Money Market Mutual Fund section now yield less than 4%.

Grant's goes shopping

Listening to David Gladstone, the venture capitalist, on shopping malls, we undertook our own investigation.

Third World Debt

A snapshot of Third World Debt and worldwide electronic dollar payments...

Levitation proceeds abroad

Money-market interest rates continue to rise in Europe as they fall in America. Virtually unnoticed in this country, the trend to stringency on the Continent weighs heavily on European business activity and stock markets. When the disparity will begin to punish the dollar exchange rate is anyone's guess.

November 22, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 22

Buy Issue PDF
The management factor

As stock prices fell on Tuesday, long-dated bond yields climbed. As the market plunged last Friday, 30-year yields meandered. Formerly, a flight to quality meant a flight to all points on the Treasury yield curve. Now the long end goes begging.

Bears' night out

On the Tuesday night before the Friday stock-market break, four shortsellers dined modestly at J.G. Melon, an Upper East Side restaurant that refuses to take credit cards....

'Paradox of cash'

The happy phrase in the headline was coined by James S. Chanos, noted short-seller and public speaker as he addressed the Grant's conference last week...

Ultimate currency

Speaking of cash, John Exter, the former central banker, former Citibanker and full-time thinker about money and banking, commented over the weekend about the sluggishness of the gold market....

Lack of interest

From a memo distributed in-house by A.G. Edwards & Co. on November 12: "We have discontinued monthly publication of gold indicators due to lack of investor interest and uncertain prospects for recovery in the price of gold. . . .

Back to 1986?

Two Wednesdays ago, a short but suggestive item moved on the Dow Jones news wire: WASHINGTON -- Sens. Ernest Hollings, D.-S.C., and Trent Lott, R.-Miss., introduced a bill to repeal the so-called passive loss limits to the 1986 Tax Reform Act as they apply to real estate.

Global shrinkage

That the credit contraction is no American aberration but an actual Global Trend was underscored again last week by the Bank for International Settlements....

CPI turns negative

For two straight months, the inflation rate has fallen in Canada.

Wild card at Chase

As the plan to impose a legislative cap on credit-card interest rates faded, the free-market tendency of nonbanks to eat the lunch of banks proceeded.

World yield curves

A snapshot as of November 19.

Not every rate falls

As money-market interest rates in the United States push toward the zero barrier, there's a rise in Europe.

November 8, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 21

Buy Issue PDF
Stay-at-home yields

Two months ago, notice was taken here of the transatlantic yield gap, the disparity between U.S. interest rates and German interest rates (and French and Swiss rates).

Insurance rumor

Stories about the illiquidity of Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York, the country's ninth-largest mutual life company with $20 billion of assets under management, have been common fare this fall.

American yield grope

If R.H. Macy & Co. sold bonds, like Morgan Stanley & Co., instead of form-fitted sheets, its problems would be behind it. If bond mutual funds could be lumped into the national retail sales data along with automobiles and sweatshirts, the recession would be over. Americans want bonds...

Great man at rest

Kitty Brady, wife of the Treasury Secretary, Nicholas F. Brady, tells W, the fashion Bible, about her husband's secret personal needs...

Nonbanks' non-loans

In money and credit, the world is one, big, happy family, and Japan's nonbanks are therefore our cousins. The nonbanks are finance, leasing, consumer credit and mortgage companies....

Without the algebra

How much better off the nation would be, Louis Lowenstein reflects in his winning new book, if the nation's young business talent had gone to Toledo in the 1980s instead of to Wall Street.

Old England property

The Financial Times, London, reports on the previously unthinkable (from the October 30 edition): Defaults on home loans will cost the U.K. insurance industry more than £3 billion during the next two years...

Automotive news

Car finance is looking stronger, but the economy, for that very reason, is looking weaker.

Food stamp indicator

In response to Monday's carefree, front-page Wall Street Journal story -- "Economy in the U.S./Isn't Nearly as Sour/As the Country's Mood" -- we submit the accompanying graph...

October 25, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 20

Buy Issue PDF
Threats to bonds

Either one believes that a collapse in the growth of the money supply is fertile ground for the next inflation, or one doesn't. We don't. If one doesn't, one is presumed to be bullish on bonds. We are not bullish on bonds. Our reasons follow:

Subsurface Citi

Like an iceberg, Citicorp is mostly underwater, and it was out of sight even before it suspended its dividend. The facts are disclosed in the tables presented inside.

Payment negotiable

Coming hard on the Optima news, the Citibank consumer-bank news and the Sears Receivables Financing Group news, a West Coast reader called with a tip.

Quote of the month

The following, from the October 11 Financial Times, caused no consternation on Wall Street but a small stir in this office...

Wall Street balloons

Salomon Brothers' balance sheet is the biggest on Wall Street (Grant's, October 11), but it isn't the fastest growing. Between 1982 and 1990, Morgan Stanley's was.

Bankers doubt themselves

If bankers won't lend to each other, why should we lend to bankers? Following reports from Europe last week of another sharp drop in interbank lending, that excellent, all-season question has become even timelier.

Never lose

Bearish yet solvent, S. Donald Sussman, 45 years old, is a role model for 1991. "I'm always bearish," the New York investor cheerfully explains. "That's how I make my living."

Metals company stirs

Handy & Harman, the 124-year-old, New York-based precious metals refiner, has had a bad decade in the stock market.

'They': a primer

The late Garet Garrett wrote prolifically about Wall Street under the best byline in the history of newspapers. In "Where the Money Grows," first published in 1911, he described the "invisible" people who seem to buy at the bottoms and sell at the tops.

Quoted Market Prices and Total Return on Box Score

Quoted Market Prices of Sovereign Debt and Total Return on Box Score

Flows of funds

Concerning the gale of expiring certificates of deposit that is ostensibly blowing down Wall Street (see diagram, page one), some Boston friends raise a question.

October 11, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 19

Buy Issue PDF
Torpedo of the day

Westinghouse Electric's third-quarter loss may be big enough to disabuse the Street of the idea that bad news is actually good news.

All puffed up

The alleged manipulations in the Treasury auctions last spring have been discussed, diagnosed or deplored down to the very last detail, except for one: Why did such titans of the stock market as Michael Steinhardt deign to buy the two-year note in the first place?

'Sell it and walk'

Take a three-year-old down to visit the unified trading floor of the New York commodity futures exchanges and that child will probably cry. Take any non-acclimated grown-up, and he or she, too, will recoil in shock or amazement.

What recovery?

Susan M. Sterne, the on-the-money consulting economist from Stowe, Vt., denies that the recent economic news is in any way surprising. It would be surprising if a recovery had started, she says, but a recovery has not. What is under way -- still -- is a recession.

Capitalism peaks (cont.)

Greenland has decided to abandon the socialist policies it has followed for decades and switch to a market economy, an official source in the Arctic territory said Tuesday.

Lawyers' contraction

Credit is money of the mind, and the decision to lend or borrow is based only in part on arithmetic. It is also a matter of morale.

Monetary torpor

The theme of less money moving more slowly also describes the recent activity on the Clearing House Interbank Payments System, better known as CHIPS ...

September 27, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 18

Buy Issue PDF
Reaching across the Atlanic

"The governor of the Bank of France yesterday warned Germany that the increase in its inflation rate was causing concern to its EC trading partners." So reported the Financial Times ...

Monetary fall

Weakness in the growth of the money supply is an unsettling fact, and people will try to explain it away.

British understatement

The Daily Telegraph, London, reporting on the collapse in high-end art sales, also noted weakness in the low end.

No more Red menace

At a gold conference in Tokyo the other day (who paid the bulls' plane fare?), Alexandre Doumnov, deputy managing director of international monetary and economic development of Gosbank, the official Soviet bank, dissembled.

Pariah no more

Once South African bonds were unmarketable because owning them was unthinkable (Grant's, Feb. 23, 1987; Feb. 1, 1991). Now they are rehabilitated...

Bottoms up! Tops down!

The Hotel Inter-Continental, owned by the Saison Group, Japan's fabulously chic, fabulously indebted retailing group, was the site of the Grant's Chicago conference on September 19.

'M-Dow' spurts

Bank credit may be contracting, but stock-market multiples are still expanding.

Wings loses altitude

Due diligence into the proposed votes-for-loans transaction between NWA and the Minnesota state government has yielded an unexpected bonanza...

More monetary mystery

Scrap-metal prices have rallied, but the run of industrial commodity prices has not.

September 13, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 17

Buy Issue PDF
Count Witte, call your office

Modern idolatry takes the form of central-bank worship, not golden-calf worship. People believe in paper currencies and in the central banks that print them.

Pray for the rich

The country's fourth-largest Mercedes-Benz dealership filed for bankruptcy protection last month, disappointing its major creditor, a Japanese bank, and menacing the lifestyle of its bull-market owner, James B. Slemons. The Los Angeles Times elaborated...

Fire the bears!

Short-selling may or may not be un-American, but it has certainly been unprofitable. Not only is the broad market rising, but also bear-baiting has become institutionalized.

Solvent in Anchorage

The new, imperial Bank America may or may not "win the West," as Wall Street is heavily betting it will, but it has not yet conquered the North.

Famous victory

The proposed merger of Security Pacific Corp. and BankAmerica Corp. would seem to violate the D.H. Cuddy canons of sound banking.

Third World rallies

From the sovereign debt front, two items: The Soviet Union is pondering default on its $65 billion of debt, and the Grant's Third World Debt Index is at its highest level since 1987,

Phantom collateral

Nui Onoue, 61-year-old Osaka restaurateur, spiritualist, mah-jongg parlor operator and 10-figure debtor, is the Meryl Streep of the summertime financial scandals.

Interest rates falter

The weakness in consumer borrowing has had reverberations up and down the credit food chain.

August 16, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 16

Buy Issue PDF
Fewer banks, fewer loans

Overcapacity in American banking was a bulwark of the financial prosperity of the 1980s. Too many banks made too many loans. Possessing too much credit, surplus entrepreneurs closed redundant deals. The prices of buildings, houses, corporations and common stocks gratuitously rose.

Each other's wash

In the glory days of the Tokyo stock market, the most bullish thing to believe was that listed companies would buy each other's stock but never sell it.

'No problemo'

"With investors flocking to high-yielding bonds from Latin America," the American Banker reported last Friday, "J.P. Morgan & Co. is preparing to underwrite a $100 million issue for Argentina -- the country's first public issue since 1982."

Cars for cash?

The main reason for the surprisingly strong, 0.5% rise in July retail sales, according to the Commerce Department, was a surprisingly strong, 1.1% gain in auto sales.

Compounding trouble

We have asked a question: If the debt continued to grow as it has been growing, what would it be at the end of the decade? Would the number be bullish or bearish or merely appalling?

Monetary feel good

A reader of ours was bemoaning the recent quarter-point cut in the federal funds rate, to 5-1/2%. There would be nothing to report if this person were a short-seller...

Great debt heist

The public debt of NWA Inc., leveraged holding company of the indebted Northwest Airlines, is offered in the neighborhood of 19%. Its bank debt is offered at 90 cents on the dollar...

Corrections: a pair

Corrections to recent issues...

Fearless on Wall Street

The accompanying graph is the futures-market analogue to the rally in Peruvian bank debt, the sideways action in gold and the explosive rally in bank stocks...

Murder for money

John C. Boland's new mystery novel, "Easy Money," is indelibly set in the world of the 1980s. People borrow money, buy companies, get rich, run afoul of the SEC, sell junk bonds -- and commit murder.

Two known facts

If the small world of interest rates knows anything by rote, it is that the Bundesbank must tighten and the Federal Reserve will certainly ease again, probably before Labor Day...

August 2, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 15

Buy Issue PDF
Orphaned deposits

Bank deposit rates are falling -- Citibank's, for example, is down to 4.88% -- as bankers reappraise the value of money. Premiums paid for so-called core deposits of failed thrifts have dropped for more than a year, and some banking markets are actually glutted.

Scandal No 2

"This is the end of the scandal," an analyst in Tokyo assured the readers of The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. "What more is there to be disclosed?" Plenty, we gather.

No questions asked

The column by Kenneth L. Fisher in the August 5 issue of Forbes is headed "Dumb Bears." More economically, it might have been headed, "Dumb" or "Bears." Juxtaposing the two words, nowadays, is redundant. If the bears were not dumb, they would have bought stocks at the bottom and drank away the summer in the Hamptons, toasting the Bush administration.

'Guarantee' on trial

"Six insurance companies downgraded last Friday by Moody's Investors Service breathed a collective sigh of relief this week as policyholders failed to stage a run on their policies..."

Flight to bigness

Fallout from the closing of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International includes the gumming up of world trade, the demoralization of an important class of British depositor and the hurried organization of a "lifeboat," a loan to head off a liquidity crisis, for one of Britain's largest mortgage lenders. All this in addition to the espionage angle.

Slow and steady

Thoughts on earning a consistently high rate of return on the stockholders' equity...

Let's move, the Army

Olympia & York, the giant, visionary, mortal North American real-estate developer, continues to suffer reverses in London.

The chairman speaks

The glass-clinking and handshaking that followed the reappointment of the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board continue to suggest a lack of clear thought.

Hope meets fact

Quantum Chemical Corp.'s 13s of 2004 gained a point to 76.6 last week, following the company's announcement that it would increase polyethylene prices...

Time out

Time Warner, the global media company with the upper-case indebtedness, may break the record for the largest American equity issue ever.

Art of the downgrade

Sotheby's Holdings has had its troubles -- the Impressionist and contemporary art markets are "in transition," it obliquely admits -- and so has the commercial-paper market.

Next move: Bundesbank

The German and American monetary scenes are, respectively, fire and ice.

July 19, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 14

Buy Issue PDF
The chairman shrinks

In our opinion -- your editor is speaking -- Alan Greenspan is not the best Fed chairman since Eccles. He is another guy with a business suit and a personal computer who thinks he can make an honest woman out of paper money.

In the rough

Japan's financial troubles have struck at one of the country's most cherished institutions -- the golf club

Reality check

So how's business? Are banks lending except against the collateral of gold bricks or Treasury bills? What's new in housing? Whither scrap metal? --Grant's has collected some answers to these timely, down-to-earth questions,

Gallbladder common

United States Surgical Corp. is an engine of human progress with a stock symbol attached. It is the head, heart and hormones of capitalism, all rolled up into one... Paradox?

Dept. of thin reeds

Meeting with fellow Citibankers recently, chairman John S. Reed disclosed that the cost of bad loans in the bank's corporate-finance section was running 25% higher than expected...

Bankers, please copy

Portraits of the Los Angeles commercial real-estate market (courtesy of the Los Angeles Business Journal)...

Secrets of the Temple

Like inflation, secrecy is an integral part of the Federal Reserve tradition. Secret work is important work. It heightens suspense, stimulates newspaper copy and generates brokerage-house commissions.

Monday in credit

The bank megamerger -- Chemical and Manufacturers Hanover -- was heralded as the most momentous credit news of JuJy 15. However, Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Co. was taken over by the State of New Jersey on the same Monday. According to The Wall Street Journal, it was the largest such seizure on record.

Even less money

The kitchen-sink monetary aggregate, M-4 (it's defined as M-3 plus T-bills, commercial paper, bankers' acceptances and savings bonds), is setting new downside records.

July 5, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 13

Buy Issue PDF
They had a pulse

So distracting was the news from the great California banks that nobody seemed to notice the fall of a minor one, Guardian Savings & Loan Association, Huntington Beach. Guardian was seized on June 21 by the Office of Thrift Supervision.

Chapter 7 pride

Newsday was on hand to record the scene at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Brooklyn last week as Judge Marvin A. Holland addressed a new crop of bankrupts

Broke in Iowa

No doubt, personal bankruptcies constitute a lagging economic indicator, but the long rise in Chapter 7 cases is a trend with legs.

A paper top?

The Mount Washington Hotel, which was sold at the knockdown price of $3.15 million at a government auction last week, is part symbol and part real estate. The largest structure in New Hampshire, it was the site of the historic Bretton Woods Monetary Conference in 1944. Lord Keynes slept in Room 219.

Yield to nirvana

Stone Container Corp., Chicago- based maker of linerboard, pulp and newsprint, is an economic bellwether.

'Invisible' risk

Lending risk is easy to grasp, but "counterparty" risk on an interest-rate swap (or on an interest-rate floor, cap or collar, or in connection with a reversible swap or "roller coaster") is flummoxing. It is invisible to most investors because it is carried off-balance sheet. Out of sight, it is out of mind.

Slow-pay Crow?

Trammell Crow Co., the nation's largest commercial real-estate developer; Citibank, the nation's largest bank, and various Arizona vendors (none of them, evidently, the nation's largest anything) are engaged in a dunning battle...

Dust to dust

Martin A. Siegel, noted investment banker and government witness, bought 112 Beachside Ave. in Westport, Conn., in 1980...

In the fire

Rapturous editorial commentary that greeted the half-point reduction in the Japanese discount rate Monday night failed to speculate on what the Bank of Japan might do if Tokyo stock prices resumed their headlong decline anyway...

June 21, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 12

Buy Issue PDF
The Steve Ross interest rate

[T]he most stupendous number is the 6.9% interest rate that the world's greatest leveraged media company was paying its banks on June 5.

Concerning Risa Kugal

A Grant's reader, taken aback by our bankruptcy story in the last issue, called to propose a theory. He ventured that debt is no longer debt. It is not the kind of ball and chain that formerly caused depressions.

18-wheeler update

The Dow Jones Transportation Average may or may not have confirmed the Dow Jones Industrials in a new bull market, as the technicians contend, but the news from the trucking front is decidedly amber.

Ultimate Chapter 7

On June 6, Brian J. Woolf filed for protection under Chapter 7 of the federal Bankruptcy Code at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Hartford. His petition is distinctive on at least two counts. First, he owned $700,000, whereas he owed $7.4 million. Second, he was once the Connecticut state banking commissioner.

Real estate glimmers

Commercial real estate is the leper of markets, but no investment stigma lasts forever. Office buildings, warehouses and shopping centers will certainly have their day again, just as other pariahs -- bonds, for instance -- have returned to have theirs. The only questions are which day, which year and which millennium?

Blameless captain

Joe L. Allbritton, chairman of Riggs National Corp., parent of Riggs National Bank, Washington, D.C., delivered a bearish appraisal of the Washington economy the other day...

Japanese credit woes

Although not in recession, Japan is showing acute recessionary symptoms in an explosion of slow loans...

Dogs don't bark

If a recession could be stopped by acclamation, this one would be over already. Despite hopeful data and strenuous jawboning, however, powerful monetary evidence continues to point to continued business weakness.

Sacrificial dollar?

At this exact writing, rumors of a rise in the Japanese prime rate have pushed the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange into a loss of almost 500 points.

June 7, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 11

Buy Issue PDF
Alfred Checchi, leading indicator

NWA, parent of Northwest Airlines, has debt on its wings, but Alfred Checchi, its Bartlett's-quoting co-chairman, is lighter than air. In a speech to the Detroit Chamber of Commerce the other day, Checchi rebuked the leverage artists of the 1980s, not naming himself.

What about Proler?

If stock prices are leading indicators of business activity, so, too, are commodity prices, and the Moody's scrap metal index has recently fallen off a table.

Astounding facts

The equity that Americans have in their homes -- the value once mortgages and other debts are subtracted -- dropped sharply in 1990 as homeowners borrowed at an unprecedented pace against their properties.

Bankruptcy blossoms

The state of bankruptcy, like General Motors common, has made a new high. Unlike the breakout in GM, however, the rally in chapters 7, 11 and 13 of the federal Bankruptcy Code has been continuous, not cyclical.

Hating gold bullion (cont.)

Evidence continues to mount that the world has had it, once and for all, with a form of money so obsolete that it actually glints in the sunlight...

Arizona utility saga

Tucson Electric Power Co. is a cork on the sea of cycles. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, during the energy frenzy, it overexpanded. In the mid- and late 1980s, in the great bull market, it overborrowed (and speculated in the stock market, too). Like a teenager on a street corner, it did what everybody else was doing.

Houston on Wall Street

The space isn't much to look at (high ceilings but outplacement karma), but the rent is stunning.

Sell Bretton Woods

The mortgagee's foreclosure sale of the Mount Washington Hotel, Bretton Woods, N.H., will be held on the afternoon of June 26, according to the ad in The Wall Street Journal.

May 24, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 10

Buy Issue PDF
Upside down in America, II

Junk-bond yields are down, but automobile-loan rates, paradoxically, are up.

Yield-curve seduction

Do you know how much of the federal deficit is currently being financed by fast money?

Japan's next move

The Sea of Liquidity in Japan has been evaporating for two years. The yield curve is negatively sloped, stock-market trading volume is low and corporate bankruptcies are high and rising.

Triple-A travails

In Maryland, a blue-chip state, even death-tax receipts are disappointing. Ditto, the receipts from state lotteries, business-franchise taxes, insurance-premium taxes, individual income taxes and sales taxes. The weakness in sales taxes is historic....

Mr. Bear wasn't invited

The Age of Discretion, which only began in the last couple of months, has already come to an end ...

Airline scoop

Apropos of last issue's analysis of Delta, USAir and NWA, a reader kindly slipped us a copy of the hard-to-obtain NWA year-end financials. "You went too easy on them," he said of Northwest's parent.

Recession in government

Maryland isn't the only triple-A rated state that has stopped looking the part. North Carolina, once a fiscal Tahiti, this week drew a stiff warning from Standard & Poor's...

When did it know it?

This is a short, searching note about copper, the red metal with the alleged business-forecasting properties.

Not-so-obscure rule

Corporate balance sheets are beginning to show the effects of an important but little-noted rule laid down last December by the Financial Accounting Standards Board.

Pray, what liquidity?

The monetary material in which the country is presently awash is not "liquidity." It is the hope of liquidity or the expectation that the Federal Reserve will do something wonderful and generous for every American family.

May 10, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 09

Buy Issue PDF
Stock market needs spectacles

When the National Bureau of Economic Research recently fixed the starting date of the recession as July 1990, it indirectly impugned the predictive powers of the stock market of the United States.

Cause for dismissal

A money manager we know was recently fired on the ground that he had invested recklessly. The offending investments were in gold- and silver-mining stocks.

Hope against hope

Faith in the central bank has very nearly become a secular religion.

Loews takes cover

More than 50 closed-end, tax-exempt bond funds are listed in the back of Barron's, and almost every one is quoted at a premium to its underlying worth, or net asset value. The average premium, 3.9%, is small but telling.

That old black magic

Getting back to the back of Barron's... The leveraged funds sell at a higher premium to net asset value than do the nonleveraged funds.

Flying coach

Let's say you're in the market for corporate bonds. You want airline bonds, and you insist on a carrier that is burning cash, running up debts and failing to cover its fixed charges. You have your reasons.

Escape from the '80s

It will be a long time before Fieldcrest Cannon, the sheet and towel and rug manufacturer, waxes nostalgic about the 1980s. Its lead bank is the Bank of Boston. Two of its principal customers, Allied Stores and Federated Department Stores, are bankrupt...

German influences

Last weekend's hefty, 6.7% wage rise granted by German employers to the 700,000-strong IG Metall engineering union may stand as the most under-appreciated interest-rate news of the week.

April 26, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 08

Buy Issue PDF
Caution makes a low

In general, speculation is making new highs and caution new lows. Common stocks and junk bonds are up, whereas gold bullion and the "TED" spread are down.

Bear Air for sale

The corporate jet purchased late last year by the Feshbach Brothers, noted short sellers in Palo Alto, Calif., is back on the market again. "The reason we're selling the plane," Joe Feshbach, general partner, told Grant's, exclusively, "is because we need to have the market go down."

Land of Lincoln

The state- and local-government fiscal slump is cyclical and therefore predictable, but its severity is out of character for this allegedly mild recession.

Dispatch from the front

Let the Federal Reserve Board survey the nation's bank lending officers. Grant's will continue to survey the president of Allied Capital Corp., David Gladstone, 48 years old.

Downgrades roll

Richard S. Wilson, of Fitch Investors Service, reports on the tide that the bull market has not yet managed to stem: ... The deluge of corporate rating cuts continued in the first quarter of 1991 as downgrades outpaced upgrades by better than 7-to-1.

Impaired? No problem

London Scottish Bank of Manchester, U.K., lends to the unbankable -- to people who have a job but, in many cases, no bank account.

Davenport hits a bump

In 1990, for the first time in 58 years, Davenport Bank & Trust Co., Davenport, Iowa, failed to exceed the prior year's operating results.

That guild advantage

Interest rates on three-month claims denominated in Dutch guilders are 300 basis points higher than three-month dollar-denominated interest rates, and Holland, unlike Germany, is not undergoing unification with a former Communist country.

April 12, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 07

Buy Issue PDF
Socialized mortgages

As capitalism flowered in the 1980s, so did a very specific kind of American socialism. Government-sponsored enterprises expanded their role in the mortgage market even as federally insured thrift institutions withdrew from it.

Worse is better

So far this year, junior securities have beaten senior securities, lower-rated bonds have outperformed higher-rated bonds and the stocks of certified shipwrecks have done better (in percentage terms) than nearly anything else under the sun.

Credit-card complacency

On April 4, a highly exotic item moved on the Bloomberg news wire. It was a report of an upward revision to bankruptcy-related losses in a pool of Citicorp-issued credit-card securities.

State of desperation

Attica Correctional Facility in western New York State, the scene of the bloody prisoners' revolt of 1971, is back in the news again. But this time the context is fiscal.

Quality for sale

Investors have spoken on the deteriorating state of municipal finance, and what they have said is, "So what?" So far in 1991, especially last month, they have sold stronger tax-exempt names and bought weaker ones.

Riggs Bank reports

In reviewing what follows, bear in mind that Riggs National Corp., parent of Riggs National Bank, Washington, D.C., does business in the shadow of the federal regulatory establishment.

Steven J. Hueglin, RIP

Many years ago, when Grant's was still in its formative, Visa Card stage of development, the editor bumped into Steve Hueglin on Broadway. A founding partner of a successful municipal-bond brokerage firm, Hueglin nonetheless managed to convey the impression of a man who was chronically running late for a train.

Up with Federalism

"The currency" is not what gets inflated anymore, anyway. It is credit, and on this score there is good news and bad news to report.

March 29, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 06

Buy Issue PDF
Desperate measures, bullish times

At the bottom of the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve became an original equity investor in the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Now, at what everybody's economics department agrees is the bottom of a petty, one-horse recession, the Fed is to become the agency's creditor.

Vapor trail of debt

These are heady, record-setting days in civil aviation. Only last week, Continental Airlines Holdings reported the biggest quarterly loss since the Wright brothers.

Barn doors close

In 1983, a reader of ours was earning $50,000 a year. Newly graduated from the Harvard Business School, he was not without prospects, but his net worth was on the short side of $20,000. One day a representative of the Boston Company called to make him a proposition. --"Do you want a line of credit?" the man asked our reader. --"I don't know. What's the catch?" --"No catch -- it's free."

Class act reports

Everyone knows about bad real estate. What is truly frightening is "good" real estate...

Canadian avalanche

Although the upbeat action in Canadian bank stocks hardly reflects the news, personal bankruptcies in Canada rose by 46% last year, to 42,782, according to The Toronto Globe & Mail.

Money markets heal

Confidence in the commercial-paper market, which the University of Michigan does not measure, is up, as is the peace-and-quiet index.

Merchants of death

The last of the funds owed to the United States by Germany for its share of Operation Desert Storm were said to be in the mail last week.

March 15, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 05

Buy Issue PDF
Credit-card fees: just ask

Everyman's pat on the back in 1991 is the laudatory letter from a bank computer. "...Now you can match your successful lifestyle with the prestige of a premium card . . . . A high credit line -- and NO ANNUAL FEE FOR A YEAR!"

Solvent in Maryland

Maryland, like Texas and parts of Massachusetts, is known for other things besides prudent lending, but the crack-up of MNC Financial has obscured the quiet success of Mercantile Bankshares Corp., Baltimore.

Inflation ahoy?

On Sunday, The New York Times was sure enough of its predictive ground to print an unhedged economic prediction on its front page: "An Exception to Rule of War: Inflation Threat is Receding." --For years Grant's, too, has thought that inflation was receding, but lately we've begun to have our doubts.

Caution to the winds

Seth Klarman, 33-year-old investor of private capital in Cambridge, Mass., is successful, affluent and out of sorts. Trained in the Max Heine school of value investing (in which a dollar bill is deftly purchased for 50 cents) he eschews the big picture. He studies companies and tries to ignore Mr. Market unless that manic gentleman is the bearer of gifts.

Yield play

John Britton writes: --Before March is out, investors will be able to buy put and call warrants tied to the yield on the long bond, or so Kenneth M. Luskin, senior vice president of Paine Webber in Los Angeles, hopes.

Late Citi gossip

Citicorp, we understand, is working on analysts, even bearish ones, to lower their sights on first-quarter results.

Borrowing prosperity

In our word-mural on inflation (see page two), we draw the distinction between what the Fed intends and what it actually achieves.

March 1, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 04

Buy Issue PDF
Upside down in America

The credit contraction has come to Main Street in a form so obvious and potentially damaging to business activity that it has largely gone unnoticed.

Tax and tax

Seeking greatness at home as well as abroad but admittedly weak on domestic subjects, President Bush has borrowed freely from the policies of his predecessors.

Such acts

Is there no fiscal progress? The seven-pound budget reminds us that there is.

Commodity credit shrinks

"The next big crunch in commodities is going to come from a lack of people ready to finance them." John Dizard, presciently wrote in these pages one year ago...

One particular 'crunch'

The proposed acquisition of Tonka Corp. by Hasbro Inc. is a case study designed for Harvard. It illuminates not only the interplay between banks and commercial paper (a favorite subject of ours) and that between interest rates and creditworthiness; it also points up the weak economics of banking.

Finnish yields fall

Concerning our "leper bond" piece of a couple of issues ago, the management of Okobank, Helsinki, posed a question: Why bear the political risks of investing in South Africa when some of the highest real yields in the world are available in Finland?

Creditors, sleep tight

Last issue, Alan Greenspan was quoted to the effect that commercial banks are expected to make illiquid loans... From the same speech, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board sought to allay unreasonable fears about the creditworthiness of the federal government.

Schwartzkopf Fed

The best hope for the bond market may be the installment as the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of the allied commander in the Persian Gulf or of the wondrously named Marine commander, Walter Boomer. American arms so far outshine American banking these days that a switch could only help the dollar.

February 15, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 03

Buy Issue PDF
Bull market in heresy.

In a rare reversal of predictive roles, the Congressional Budget Office is now more optimistic than the White House about the American economy in 1991.

Next sale: Camp David

The Shawmut Inn is the place to stay in Kennebunkport, Me., if President Bush is at his summer home at Walker's Point and you are a White House correspondent assigned to watch him play power golf. The real-estate lending crisis hit home for the GOP on February 1 when this 19th century hostelry turned up in a mortgage foreclosure ad in The Wall Street Journal.

Stone tells a story

From January 15 -- D-Day -- to February 7, the common stock of Stone Container Corp., the ultra-leveraged paperboard company, vaulted by 69%. In the same three weeks, its subordinated notes (the 13-5/8s of '95) gained 33%, but its senior bank loans rose by only 4.7%.

Bond ratings crash

W. Braddock Hickman once posited a truism. Based on research into the first four decades of this century, he found that downgrades of debt issues tend to predominate in bad times whereas upgrades tend to characterize good times. ...Now Moody's Investors Service has amended Hickman and brought him up to date.

Guardian at bay

In general, flaming thrifts are yesterday's news, but the Guardian is a case for the future. In its heyday, it lent to the marginal borrower. Now, under terms of [an] OTS agreement, it will do less of that...

Abroad in St. Louis

Exactly one year ago, Grant's reported on a change in U.S. banking law that allowed Americans to open bank deposits denominated in foreign currencies. For 20 years, the Treasury had discouraged (although not absolutely prohibited) such accounts. Effective Jan. 1, 1990, however, the government changed its mind.

Wall of worry?

German bond yields have been dropping as if the issue of the cost of unification were now a non-issue. And well it might be. On Tuesday, however, The Journal of Commerce published this cautionary report...

Bull market in folding money

The only crisis in currency is the heavy demand for it. The standard seasonal pattern is that cash returns to the banking system after the Christmas holidays. Some has returned this year, but scarcely...

February 1, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 02

Buy Issue PDF
Flight to leverage

The past is an easier topic than the future, and a hobbyhorse is the most comfortable seat in the house. For years, we have ridden the hobbyhorse of debt, and it's a cinch that the market will not ring a bell when it's time to dismount.

Texan likes bonds

Van Hoisington, the Houston-based bond investor who is either bullish or bearish but never impartial, is bullish nowadays -- very. Ninety percent of the money he manages is invested in 30-year Treasurys.

Credit card common

MNC Financial's trophy credit-card company, MBNA Corp., came to market in an initial public offering the other day and flew right out the window. Unsuccessful in lining up a corporate buyer, the stricken MNC (parent of what used to be Maryland National Bank) scored with the public.

Nice collateral

Appalling revelations about the niche New York real-estate market came to light at a recent meeting of a lower-Manhattan community board.

Penn Central redux?

Long ago in the commercial-paper market, Penn Central Transportation Co. defaulted. The year was 1970 -- in financial time, the Bronze Age -- and the size of the default was $82 million. Small though it may seem in dollars, the failure caused a wrenching contraction in the paper market and a hasty rescue by the Federal Reserve...

Out to lunch

Monday's news of the run on Old Stone Corp.'s Rhode Island banks was something out of an old Movietone newsreel: The depositors wanted cash, and they didn't care if the federal government said it insured their deposits.

Leper bonds rally

Even now, Iraq may not have overtaken South Africa as the most hated country on the face of the earth. There's objective evidence that Pretoria is still the greatest pariah in the international bond market.

Ships in the night

If the stock of a leveraged gas pipeline company looked like this (note accompanying graph), where would its $2.8 billion of long-term debt stand? The answer is: surprisingly close to par.

The United States alone

In a world of negatively sloped yield curves, the American yield curve is positively sloped. Whereas many other countries labor under high money-market interest rates, the United States has low ones.

January 18, 1991, Vol. 09, No. 01

Buy Issue PDF
Interest rate of the year

Year after year, since time out of mind, the federal funds rate was the world's greatest interest rate. It was the fulcrum rate of interest in the world's leading economy. It was the interest rate that, more than any other, bore the official stamp of the Federal Reserve Board... Not this year, though.

Money in the mattress

When banks stop lending, lending no longer stops. Money-market funds, insurance companies and loans refashioned into securities have relegated commercial banks to the back of the bus of American credit.

Tax-exempt phlegm

If the recession is deepening and statehouse tax receipts are falling (as we happen to believe), you wouldn't know it from the alignment of yields in the general-obligation bond market. They are the picture of full employment.

Equitable in the teens

In our pre-Christmas issue, we disclosed that a short-dated Eurobond of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States was priced at the condemning yield of 22%....

Citi' s new real estate

On D-Day, January 15, Citicorp disclosed its fourth-quarter results, but aficionados are still buzzing about the third quarter. If you are deeper into the vault of banking than we are, you already know about form Y-9C. It is a Federal Reserve document, and it is like the universal form 10-Q but more exotic....

Don Dixon reflects

Shad Rowe writes from Dallas: Reckless, self-serving, incompetent lending is a crime against common sense. It is not, however, covered by statute. If it were, Don R. Dixon, the notorious owner of Vernon Savings Association, could expect to remain in prison until Hell freezes over.

Yields rally worldwide

We reported last fall that the dividend yield on Standard Chartered Bank PLC, the backpedaling London bank-holding company, was the highest for any British bank, ever.

CHIPS at war

If fighting in the Middle East encompasses economic warfare, one potential battleground is Amman, Jordan, home to a large commercial bank that belongs to Clearinghouse Interbank Payments System (CHIPS).

Runaway ease?

The Federal Reserve, although powerless in the short run to restore Rupert Murdoch's net worth and thus the collateral value of his debt to banks, has taken extraordinary steps to reliquefy the banking system.