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”.

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 major changes in value.

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 a touch unsettled by what we’ve seen.  The government clearly bailed out depositors. 

During every economic cycle there is someone who wants to claim that some particular element of the cycle is “different this time”.

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.

Economists love referencing the play “Waiting for Godot”. It is a play in which two people engage in discussions while they wait for their friend Godot.

The chart below was created by IDC, but this chart has seen many iterations from many different sources.  Every time we look at it, we take a minute to pause and think about what this chart actually says. 

Abruptly changing interest rates have a really interesting effect on human behavior. What we’ve seen over the last year is that rather than acting to position themselves for raising rates, market participants on both sides have decided to sit on their hands.