Business

Remember in December when we were told incessantly that "meh, it's just 25bps!"

It appears that 'liftoff' in rates is having a real impact on a particular sector as the potential for tightening credit conditions (and higher costs of funding) have crashed the stocks of peer-to-peer/direct lenders like Lending Tree, OnDeck, and Lending Club.

Another bubble bursts! And the companies are shocked!

• *LENDING TREE NOT AWARE OF ANY REASON TO JUSTIFY SHR DECLINE

It seems someone is...

If anyone had expected that today's record AB InBev deal would lead to a tail in the just concluded $21 billion 10-Year (technically 9 Year-10 month CUSIP M56 reopening) auction, they would be very disappointed, when moments ago the US Treasury announced a high yield of 2.09%, stopping a whopping 1.5 bps through the When Issued 2.105%, and the lowest yield since October's 2.07%.

The Bid to Cover of 2.77 also rebounded solidly from both last month's 2.64 and the TTM average of 2.63, and was in fact the highest since December 2014.

Over three years ago, in August 2012, we described how while US regulators and authorities were cracking down on such "illegal" banks as Standard Chartered and HSBC, they were allowing the non-corporate shielded entities, the actual individuals who benefited from the bank crimes, slip through the cracks simply by allowing them to park billions of ill-gotten gains in US real estate:

Paper Gold: Utopia for Alchemists

John Hathaway, respected authority on the gold market and senior portfolio manager with Tocqueville Asset Management has written an excellent research paper on the fundamentals driving the gold market today.

While the market for corporate bond issuance has been relatively quiet among the recent broader market turbulence, in a few hours a historic new bond is about to price and be sold to investors.