"Do not my friends become addicted to water. It will take hold of you and you will resent its absence." - Immortan Joe. Not financial advice.

Two hours after the market close $NBHC announces $50 million in credit losses tied to franchise lending and fintech activity. This should mean a loss for 3Q. But they reupped the buyback, so...

What's going on at $FRME? CEO retiring at 55. Previous CEO was moved aside at age 60 to make room for this guy. Next CEO is 60 and came to bank along with first CEO. Health? Other personal issues?

In retrospect, it's unbelievably crazy that the Truman Administration let Ted Williams fly combat missions in Korea in 1953 for a bloody war that was going nowhere. It would be like Trump calling up Mike Trout and sending him to Kharg Island. And Trout would get wounded.

Pitchers with consecutive 10+ WAR seasons in the last 100 years: Bob Gibson in 1968-9 Lefty Grove in 1930-1 Randy Johnson in 2001-2 & Wilbur Wood in 1971-2 Bet you didn't see that one coming.

I thought the $WAFD deal didn't make a ton of sense, but am frankly surprised by the vehemence of the market's loathing. Please explain it to me like I'm index-hugging golden retriever.

My guess is $WAFd is (1) huge embedded losses on fixed rate loans meant ROE would drag for years (2) didn’t have stock price to buy others (3) CEO had plane crash and remarriage in last few years and so less patience for the grind ahead (4) so merge into a bigger market cap and trigger the change in control. The corollary to (1) is they had the embedded rate risk because that was the only way they added value for the customers.

Extremely large interest rate marks in tonight's $WAFD deal. Got to respect the decision to punt rather than sell 25% new shares to bury their past mistakes.

The reason people hate flock cameras is that they know the government will not use them to lock up the insane depraved criminals who will stab you while you walk through Times Square but will instead mail you a ticket for speeding on an empty highway at 2AM.

Cooper Flagg is the only player in NBA history to have graduated from a Maine high school that was NOT Maine Central Institute. Make it make sense.

Controlling shareholder at $HTH, $HMST & $FACO in turmoil. wsj.com/business/a-texas-ban…

$C rant: I just listened to a foreign policy podcast with a former general who has served in 4 administrations at senior levels. His only time in the private sector was 10 years at Citi in admin and "change" roles that don't obviously have P&L significance. How can we take $C seriously as an investment with this approach? They similarly warehoused Jack Lew during Bush II and people who worked with him had no idea what he did. The guy on the podcast seemed great. However, could he deliver a budget and revenue growth? No reason to think so. $C is a stock you can buy when cheap because the American Empire doesn't function without it. No idea if CEO Fraser has transitioned away from being a QUANGO yet.

The US bank call reports for the June 30 quarter are now out. This is several days faster than before and with fewer late filings. What can one learn from a close reading of call reports? 1.A few banks file bank level call reports to the FDIC before they report their earnings via SEC filings. Occasionally, the earnings results are quite different than expected. 2. Press releases usually only reveal nonaccrual loans (sort of equivalent to 90+ day delinquent). Call reports are the only place that you will see loans 30-89 days past due or restructured loans. The first shows the pipeline into nonaccrual, the second shows a sneaky back door out of nonaccrual. 3.The call report is 15 days faster than the 10-Q filing in showing what loan categories are driving credit problems. 4.If the stock is not a SEC filer, like so many bank microcaps, the call report is much more granular information than you will get from a one page press release. Since X's blue checkmark allows verbosity, I'm lowering my asset threshold at the bank level from the $1 billion to $500 million. I will still only mention banks with a 100 bps move in a loan quality category. To underline how significant a move that is, neither $CCB -44% on Thursday or $GBFH -30% the same day exceeded that level! Three publicly traded banks had multiple levels of deterioration: $BANC had losses up 233 bps annualized across multiple categories, yet still had nonaccruals up 108 bps, mostly due to construction deterioration. So, the kitchen sink was not thrown out. $NEWT had losses up 320 bps and 30-89 days delinquent loans up 305 bps. The fruits of doubling the loans in the last 12 months are still ripening. $NEWT has not yet reported quarterly earnings. $CASH had 30-89 days delinquent loans up 180 bps and nonaccruals up 320 bps. This may be seasonal, but it wasn't this seasonal last year. There's a special category for $IBOC. It has 5 bank subsidiaries: two have minor issues in early delinquencies and two others have massive C&I nonaccruals. The total for the banks shows net income up slightly over 1Q while nonaccruals are up 79%. $IBOC has not yet reported quarterly earnings. These 7 banks had significant deterioration in loans 30-89 days past due. This is a category with a lot of false alarms, so it can mean everything or nothing. $DENI has some issues in owner-occupied commercial real estate (CRE) $MVLY has issues with investor CRE $MPCB has problems with C&I $ORPB has a bad construction loan - can't remember any problem there before $QNTO has problems across many categories. Can't remember when they didn't have problems. $TYBT, a darling for some, has C&I issues. $USMT has both C&I and owner-occupied CRE problems. Loss content is usually highest in construction and C&I problems. There's a loophole that allows banks to keep 90+ day delinquent loans off nonaccrual if they're super confident in collecting. Nobody is overusing that loophole as it has been replaced by the restructuring loophole. The restructuring loophole was heavily used by $EFSG, a small western PA bank, for weak CRE loans. Before we get to the nonaccrual loans, a bit about their relationship to loan losses. Essentially, consumer loans seldom reach nonaccruals, they are contractually written off as losses after a certain number of days (90, 120 or 180). Commercial nonaccruals drive future commercial loan losses and commercial losses are much more volatile than consumer losses. As since the stock market really dislikes volatile losses, we pay disproportionate attention to nonaccruals. The corollary is that commercial losses reduce the pool of nonaccruals, so taking a loss and watching nonaccruals fall is OK while taking a loss and watching nonaccrual rise is really bad. $BSBK had a 200+ bp jump in nonaccruals due to investor CRE $CZWI had nonaccruals up 100 bps on investor CRE despite somewhat higher losses. They have attracted an activist. $CNBB had nonaccruals up 110 bps on owner-occupied CRE. Losses are minimal. $EGBN took big writedowns and saw nonaccruals drop commensurately $FINW has had consumer losses surging 4 quarters in a row, but the margin is surging too, so it's likely a mix shift. I don't know them. $DE had a $60 million jump in loan losses at its bank sub. Delinquencies plummeted. I bought lots of parts for my equipment. $MRBK had nonaccruals rise 100+ bps in construction lending. It's a mystery how they have problems in their booming region. $MCB had losses up $120 bps on multifamily (thanks Mayor Mamdani) and C&I. Nonaccruals only fell a third of what they should have $NODB had nonaccruals rise 150 bps on a owner-occupied CRE loan (or two) $OSBK had nonaccruals rise 160 bps on investor CRE. $PBNK had a 4.00% loss rate due to C&I, the nonaccruals fell commensurately the bank sub of Pitney Bowes $PBI had somewhat higher loan losses $SOUB had 8% losses and finally (?) cleared its backlog of problems. $SSBI had 4% losses and did the same. $XYZ's Square sub had losses up 280 bps from 1Q Finally, Korea's Woori Bank had a significant jump in nonaccruals as a CRE loan went bad.

The FDIC is updating its call report data base faster than before, so I'll post my list of banks w/ significant loan quality deterioration tomorrow, a few days faster than usual. Also, there will be more commentary and the threshold will fall from $1B to $500 million.

LeBron going to the 76ers is very analagous to Ty Cobb moving to Connie Mack’s Athletics in 1927 for Cobb’s last two years. This time the 1927 Yankees don’t stand in the way.

The $SCYT call report is out. Looks like they earned $4.40 vs $3.30. The three nonaccrual loans all healed and the total is now zero. McMinnville also has all the shrubbery that the Knights covet.

Why is $FSBC selling fresh stock when its equity/assets is still 9%? IMO, the stock is expensive (for a bank) at 2+ TBV and 13x EPS so they can get more capital without any pain and they're all CRE, all the time and the regulators' concentration "guidelines" are irritating.