The Federal Reserve raised Fed Funds Rates another quarter of a point last week to a full 5% We’re including the chart this week because we believe the chart gives us some perspective on where we’ve been, where we are, and perhaps even what’s “normal”.  Believe it or not, 5% is pretty normal!!!!  But it...Read More

Years ago, a colleague/mentor shared a truth about the investment industry that few people stop to think about.  You can be a good investor, or you can be really good at the investment business…very few people are both.  In an ideal world, investment managers combine people with both skills for ultimate success, but few ever...Read More

If you’ve been watching Willow Creek Partners operate over the last several years, you know that we love irrational markets when they favor taking risks and move away from them when those dynamics flip. With that in mind, there was a lot of speculation in single and multifamily housing during the 2020-21 time period. Read More

The fallout from SVB’s collapse continues to dominate the news, and we could spend the next 3 days writing about the various pieces and parts of their demise. But frankly, CNBC will cover that with far better resources than we can, so we’ll stick to the points that we find underappreciated and give them a...Read More

It’s not often that we’re going to agree with what Jim Cramer says on CNBC, so soak this in.  The issues we have seen with SVB, Credit Suisse, Signature and even Silvergate are anti-inflationary.  These problems, though each has their own nuance, are likely to increase bank scrutiny on every new loan that is issued. ...Read More

Stephen Squeri, chairman and chief executive at Amex, said in a letter to shareholders.  “Millennial and Gen Z customers, who are our fastest-growing customer cohort in terms of both new account acquisitions and card spending, comprised over 60% of our new consumer proprietary accounts globally”.Read More

In talking about bank failures and SVB/Signature, it’s easy to dismiss the problems as unique because these were unique banks.  One was focused on VC and the other had huge Crypto exposures.  Obviously, these were bad actors, and this couldn’t happen to others right?  Well….YES, it can happen to others and sometimes “stable” assets experience...Read More

Last week we mentioned that there would be more to the story of SVB and Signature Bank.  Frankly, this story has so dominated the news that it is very difficult to avoid even as we think about a very broad set of asset classes.  A few days into this crisis we can’t help but feel...Read More

During every economic cycle there is someone who wants to claim that some particular element of the cycle is “different this time”. The implication of this statement is that the lessons we have learned in the past no longer apply.Read More

The stories of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank saw the beginning of their end last week as both mismanagement of risk and unfortunate market conditions created the 2nd and 3rd largest bank failures in US history.Read More