SHOP

There were a lot of reasons for the 2008 credit crisis. Some of these included poor underwriting on personal mortgage loans, investors not doing their due diligence on investments, individuals lying on their mortgage applications, and government interference, to name just a few. Another cause resulted from credit rating agencies…

Technology has changed how the capital and financial markets operate. It is easy to identify some of these changes under the banner of Fintech (Financial Technology) including electronic trading, blockchain, peer to peer lending, robo-advisors, and crowdfunding. But what about capital markets and financial training? Technology has also made extensive…

Author: Charles Gates High fashion and high finance may have an all too apparent connection when it comes to the new season and folks with considerable means go shopping for the latest styles in trendy boutiques. Last season’s finery may well have drifted rapidly out of style and that change…

It seems that every now and then credit derivatives arise as the public whipping boy among financial products. Most recently, the case of Windstream has been publicized as another example of evil credit derivatives in an article, “What Hedge Funds Consider a Win Is a Disaster for Everyone Else,” by…

Author: Charles Gates In the historic conversion of the world’s financial markets away from Libor as the most widely used benchmark rate for loans and derivatives, most attention in the United States has been focused on the switch from Libor to SOFR (Secured Overnight Financing Rate). The demise of Libor,…

Authors: Charles Gates and Ken Kapner Interest rate swaps denominated in US dollars (an agreement between two counterparties to exchange a fixed rate of interest for a floating rate of interest for a specific period of time calculated on a notional principal amount) have been in existence since the early…

Author: Charles Gates Negative interest rates have been observed many times in various markets, but over the past few years, have occurred more often than can be explained by a mere anomaly. We have no problem imagining why a government or company would want to issue bonds at a negative…

Author: Charles Gates At the end of this past week, headlines on the financial news pages around the United States if not the world, alerted us all to a rare and unsettling event: “Treasury Market Calls Time on Fed Hikes as Curve Finally Inverts” (Bloomberg, 3/22/19) “Stocks, Bond Yields Fall…

By Ken Kapner GFMI’s Newest Article The history of marijuana is one fraught with varying degrees of acceptance, illegality, utility, and recreation. As noted in GFMI’s most recent article, Marijuana Related Businesses (MRBs): High Hopes for a Fast-Growing Industry: In the United States, ten states have legalized pot for recreational…

In late 2017, GFMI’s President and CEO, Ken Kapner, wrote an article about the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), which is used by capital markets participants as the rate by which they would lend each other money. For a variety of reasons, including the realization that the rate was being…