In the last article from this series in June 2020, I spoke about the impending doom of rising interest rates. I mentioned how this would be precipitated by additional federal government stimulus legislation and the need for the U.S. Treasury to issue more debt to fund so much new federal spending. For once I was right. The yield curve did steepen back in June. Specifically, most of the steepening occurred primarily on the 20-year point due to the new treasury issuance with that same maturity, the rest of the curve was relatively unchanged from the 0-10-year points. As a quick refresher, since the yield curve represents expected future interest rates, it also indicates growth expectations for the general economy. …
Posts published in “Finance”
By Kyu Kim & Richard Sequeira
It was my mom who first told me that every decade or so, there has always been an epic market crash. A lot of experts agree with her that market crashes should never be a surprise (Kaplan). There was the 2000 dot-com bubble, the 2008 financial crisis, and again in 2020 with the Covid pandemic; I felt that the market crash driven by Covid was just another of those phenomena. I knew in my heart that it would go up, but my philosophy then was only to invest the amount I wouldn’t mind losing.
So, as a newbie, in March 2020, I bought ~$15,000 worth of reasonably conservative index funds.…
On Friday March 5, NYU Stern’s Fubon Center for Technology, Business, and Innovation hosted Stern’s fourth annual Fintech Conference via a Virtual Zoom Webinar. The conference theme was “No Borders, No Barriers,” highlighting that technology has no passport. In line with that theme, the event featured an international slate of speakers from several countries, including the United States, Israel, India, Argentina, United Kingdom, California, and the Netherlands.
The conference was once again a smashing success with 1,200 registrants signing up for the virtual format, bringing together “top fintech scholars, forward-looking financial institutions, innovative fintech startups, and leading fintech investors” in the words of Kathleen DeRose, Director of the Fubon Fintech Initiative and Clinical Associate Professor of Finance at Stern. …
What is a short squeeze and is this a common phenomenon?
Before we can get to answering what a short squeeze is, we need to answer some preliminary questions.
Let’s start with what is short?
A short is a position taken by an investor or trader making a bet that an asset’s price will go down, not up. On average, under 5% of the S&P market capitalization is shorted. Most participants in the stock market invest because they believe US stocks will go up over time. Shorts are a very small group of investors betting against most other investors’ view of the direction in the market and as such, are viewed with disdain.…
Amazon has found its way to market headlines yet again in 2021. This time it’s a relatively small surprise, Jeff Bezos is stepping down as CEO, effective later this year. I trust you did not believe that any human, even Jeff Bezos, could run a space exploration organization, build the world’s most profitable company from scratch, and own the Washington Post all at the same time indefinitely. After his resignation, Bezos will stay with the firm as executive chairman of the board. Andy Jassy, who was formerly head of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the massively successful cloud services platform offered by Amazon, will take over as CEO of the company. …