Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

IPO filings. month by month, when graphed as above yield a very volatile line, much more volatile than the S&P 500 index represented by the overlain blue curve there.  Nonetheless, the recent collapse in the quantity of IPO filings by United States companies is remarkable. As you see, in late 2007 and in the early months of 2008 the IPO market almost disappeared entirely.  But the line was headed back up BEFORE the worst of the crisis. The worst, you may remember, began with the bankruptcy of Lehman and the sale of Merrill Lynch for a fire sale price. That was in mid September 2008, during the upswing in IPO rates you see in the middle of the graph. Simplifying greatly, there was a high in 2010, a month with 35 IPOs, and a lot of lows later that year and throughout 2011.  Then a recovery getting above 40 IPOs per month a couple of times in 2013 and again in 2014. Since then, though ... collapse, fairly consistently month to month. ONLY THREE IPO FILINGS ...

  Financial institutions have “risk managers,” whose job is, in essence, to worry about such matters as we’ve been discussing. A risk manager assesses the risk to an institution’s portfolio or portfolios, assigns the appropriate number, and (to the extent his organization allows) does generally try to mitigate it. Speaking a bit roughly, there are four things to do about any given risk: avoid it, mitigate it, transfer it, retain it. If a risk manager persuades his superiors that a particular proposed merger comes with a lot of risk, because a “due diligence” review shows the potential target company has a lot of off-balance-sheet liabilities, then he may scuttle the merger entirely. Mission accomplished. If he can’t scuttle the merger, he can at least suggest ways in which the risks of the merger may be reduced, by for example making it a condition of any deal that the target entity spin off its more troublesome subsidiaries first. When it can be neither avoided nor re...

On a recent trip to NYC I discovered ads in the Metronorth train cars promoting Fox Business News on the ground that they have Charlie Gasparino reporting for them. Really?  That's the selling point?  Former CNBC editor Charlie Gasbag has switched over? Remember Charlie isn't at CNBC anymore largely because he flipped out over the air over the harmless expression., "What have you got?" During the worst of the 2008 crisis, on the regular late-afternoon program "Closing Bell," anchor Dylan Ratigan introduced CG, obviously under the impression that CG was about to share with him and us some important new datum about a shakeup in the management ranks at Merrill Lynch. Indeed, the camera than framed Charles' face with the unsubtle words "Mgmt Turmoil Continues at Merrill Lynch" below. Here's a Youtube vido of the weird exchange . Anyway, Charles ended up conveying no news at all and wasting a good deal of time on a rather busy news ...