First Republic Stank
186: FRC Implodes, Epstein List Leaks, META Resurgence
Good morning kings and queens.
Getting back into some of our high level market and global news reviews on Monday’s to prep everyone for the week ahead. Paid post later this week.
The legacy financial system chaos continues this morning with the announcement that First Republic Bank FRC 0.00%↑ is officially donezo. JPMorgan has acquired all of First Republic’s deposits and a reportedly a “substantial majority of assets.”
Lots of critical financial markets updates and global news to digest before the week kicks into gear - let’s get into it.
Financial Markets
The nationalization and consolidation of regional banks continues this morning with JPMorgan plucking up all of the solid assets from First Republic for pennies on the dollar amidst continued turmoil in financial markets.
As of April 13, First Republic had approximately $229 billion in total assets and $104 billion in total deposits, the FDIC said.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said early Monday that First Republic Bank’s 84 branches in eight states will reopen as branches of JPMorgan Chase Bank and depositors will have full access to all of their deposits (AP).
OOOOF.
Equity futures are up ahead of market open Monday with some strong tech earnings fueling momentum.
Around 77.9% of companies reporting have topped Street forecasts, besting both the 73.5% average recorded over the past four quarters and the longer term average of around 66.3% (The Street). There are still some laggards including powerhouse names like Amazon.
Shares of Amazon (AMZN) fell more than 3% Friday after reports of a slowing cloud business
Snap (SNAP) shares fell more than 17% Friday
The Federal Reserve's May policy meeting will finish up on Wednesday. A tenth consecutive rate hike is expected and was highlighted on the circulating video of JPOW speaking with Russian hackers posing as Ukrainian officials.
The European Central Bank will make a decision on Thursday to hike by 25 or 50 bps
Softbank Group will look to list chipmaker Arm Ltd on the Nasdaq after a failed attempt to sell the chipmaker to NVDA 0.00%↑ - this could mark a behemoth IPO if successful
According to Arkham Intel, last night, the crypto exchange Binance saw its largest single Bitcoin deposit in the past week. A deposit address that had remained unused/dormant for 4 months received inflows from 5 separate addresses, totalling over 1.2K BTC, worth over $35M.
The richest 1% of Americans now own more stocks than the other 99%, according to the Financial Times
The Kingdom of Bhutan confirmed last week that it has been mining Bitcoin for several years
Americans could see all promised Social Security benefits cut by nearly 27% in just 10 years, according to a recent piece by Bloomberg
The viral meme coin PEPE is down about 44% from it’s local top - the coin hit around $0.15 over the last 24 hours
$DXY (Dollar Index) has ripped over the last several hours — this is generally bad news for crypto and risk on assets
One of the brighter spots in Tech has been META’s resurgence from it’s sell off woes over the last year. Revenue came in at $28.65 billion vs. $27.65 billion expected by analysts. The company has aggressively culled employees firing more than 11,000 in November and announcing thousands more recently. Friday the company reported a rather unexpected increase in revenue for the first quarter after three straight periods of declines. META shares are up about 164% from their November 2022 low of around $89.
META was one of the names we recommended adding over the last several months as we felt the name was simply much to beat up to remain at sub $100.
"Substantially all employees impacted by the layoffs announced in November 2022 are no longer reflected in our reported headcount as of March 31, 2023. Further, the employees that would be impacted by the 2023 layoffs are included in our reported headcount as of March 31, 2023."
— META Announcement
This larger trend of more government intervention (via FDIC) and the largest banks is likely to continue.
As the big bulge brackets acquire more and more assets and consequently more influence, you can expect narratives surrounding the Fed’s monetary policy, UBI (Universal Basic Income), and Quantitative tightening. Understand that JPM just got an absolute sweetheart deal on all of the assets they took from First Republic and this only makes the bank more powerful and influential. While the chaos continues and regular people sit in the dark you can rest assured our politicians and elite are continuing to abuse power and the system.
This likely will not be the last regional bank to fail either — PacWest Bancorp is currently getting slaughtered in the markets today so this is a good one to keep an eye on as it may share a much similar fate.
For now we are sitting on our hands only actively adding to dividend stock positions. We will put out our full analysis of the crypto markets as they stand this week.
Market Sentiment
"We are near the end of the deposit flight"
“I’m a bear when it’s called for, like in 2007. But this stock market belongs to the bulls”
— Cramer
[The US is] one of the worst countries in the world as far as corporate governance"
—Carl Icahn
"We are well on the way to stabilizing the banking system”
— President Biden
Global News
BRICS countries and newcomers are continuing to make move towards weening dollar usage. Russia is beginning to revamp their offensives in Ukraine. China seems to be frothing at the mouth to make a move on Taiwan soon (we expect that to occur before or immediately after the 2024 election. Globally many are likely watching the turmoil in US financial markets.
However - bits and pieces of some of the biggest and darkest stories from. the last two years seem to be surfacing at a higher rate than normal.
The CIA's William Burns, Goldman Sach’s Kathryn Ruemmler, Noam Chomsky, the president of Bard College, a Kissinger consultant and a Rothschild all met with Jeffrey Epstein in the years after his conviction new documents show. Most people have long forgotten about the Epstein story but the truth is that little to nothing was done in the form of investigations or accountability for those involved.
It’s pretty disheartening but the bits of evidence that are slowly surfacing suggest many powerful and well known people were involved in some capacity or at least brushed shoulders with Epstein. One of the predominant internet theories circulating is that Epstein was a CIA asset used to blackmail foreign leaders with footage of misdeeds with the underage girls trafficked to Epstein’s island.
To us, this seems plausible as it would explain the abundance of public financial and intelligence contacts that seem to be intertwined in this world. The darker explanation is that all of these people were “clients” of Epstein’s and therefore committed depraved and unspeakable crimes.
We don’t want to dwell on this subject for too long but the reality is most of the public wouldn’t even be able to conceive the truth about this. It would be just about as horrifying and sickening as possible.
Expect the truth to continue to be hidden although we may see some small leaks here and there meant to hopefully pacify those still brave enough to continue trying to bring all involved to justice.
The United States military has allegedly moved strategic air tankers from Germany to Poland as Russia begins a new assault around Bakhmut in Ukraine.
Syria calls to abandon the US dollar for global transactions and adopt Chinese Yuan.
Dutch police recently arrested ‘Boris Johnson’ after a DUI incident
56% of Americans think that going to college is not worth the cost, per WSJ (Unusual Whales).
The Iranian embassy in Saudi Arabia was just reopened
Severe clashes ripped through Paris this morning as police were hit by firebombs.
Texas AG Ken Paxton will move to investigate Pfizer, J&J, and Moderna over their gain-of-function research.
Russia's biggest bank, Sberbank, announced on Monday that it has released a new competitor to ChatGPT called GigaChat.
More than 110 nations are now developing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), says the IMF (International Monetary Fund) chief
Syria’s Bashar al-Assad praised China today and stressed the necessity to ditch the US dollar, a growing trend for countries with good relations w/ Russia and China
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey said last week that the company ‘went south’ after Elon Musk took over
Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, a prominent artificial intelligence researcher well known as the “Godfather of AI” has quit his job at Google saying he partly regrets his work advancing the burgeoning technology because of the many risks it poses to society. and humans
The White House Correspondents dinner displayed many of the reasons that Americans are losing trust in institutions and scrutinizing the elite more and more.
Many jokes and comments were made that displayed an utter lack of awareness.
Biden made several controversial jokes from ridiculing Tucker Carlson for being forced out of Fox News and with the recent Desantis/Disney drama in Florida.
“The truth just, we really have got a record to be proud of… ’vaccinated’ the nation, transformed the economy, showed out in the midterms… But the job isn't finished... I mean, I mean it is at least finished for Tucker Carlson…. hat are you wooing about like that (as the crowd reacts) you think that isn’t reasonable? Give me a break”
He then proceeded to introduce another right leaning comedian prefacing the intro with:
“I am going to be fine with your jokes, but I’m not sure about Dark Brandon” leaning into the internet meme highlighting Biden’s decisions in office.
In Europe the War in Ukraine seems to be accelerating past it’s months of relative calm. Last night Russia launched a massive wave of missile strikes against Ukraine. More than 20 TU-95/TU-160s bombers have been scrambled in the air and Kalibr missiles have also been launched from ships/subs in the Black Sea (Visegrad 24). The naval element of this conflict is becoming more important and illustrates one of the new vectors in which this conflict might escalate to involved Western or NATO forces.
It is now being reported that President Zelensky of Ukraine has created a “blacklist” of American journalists and media personalities that he believes support Russia. This clearly entails people that are guilty of simply being critical or against the War in Ukraine.
The Week covered the release from the Ukrainian Government:
Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation announced Monday that it had compiled a list of American citizens who have been “promoting Russian propaganda.”
The center, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky created in 2021, named Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), journalist Glenn Greenwald, retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor, academic John Mearsheimer, and military historian Edward Luttwak.
Gabbard and Greenwald have endorsed the theory — which Russia promotes and Ukraine denies — that there are dozens of U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine. In the early days of the invasion, MacGregor told Fox News that Zelensky was a “puppet” and was “putting huge numbers of his own population at unnecessary risk” by refusing to cave to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands.
Mearsheimer delivered a lecture in 2015 with the title “Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault?” in which he argued that NATO and the EU had driven Ukraine into conflict with Russia by teasing the possibility of membership without ever intending to grant it. Paul made similar statements and has voted against military aid for Ukraine. In April, Luttwak called for a peace deal that would allow disputed territories in the Donbas to hold referendums on whether to join with Russia or remain part of Ukraine.
Regardless of how you feel about Tucker or Fox News it’s now apparent that any dissidents of what the Biden Administration stands for will be targeted. Tucker was one of the last remaining major anti war voices and his removal surely indicates an effort to continue normalizing blind support for this endless and costly conflict.
As the economic and political environment continues to get more and more heated it’s going to become vital for people to do the opposite of what the masses are doing to “make it”.
Tomorrow or Wednesday we’ll drop our paid post on the top 10 financial and life mistakes to avoid in the coming months. You can check out some of our most popular paid posts below, read by thousands of investors, traders, chads, and people looking to get the unfiltered truth about markets, global news, and life.
The Simple Blueprint for Getting Rich
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Hope everyone has a great week!
*Disclaimer — I am a former commodities trader and current enterprise salesman with a monkey brain — this is not formal investment advice. Please research all of your investments before throwing money at them and ensure you are not investing or gambling irresponsibly
Love the Jefferson quote at the end. This country needs a Jeffersonian Revival.
Corn bidding in the face of regional bank failures + US CDS blowing out is noteworthy. It will be so obvious in hindsight.