"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.

I just read the medical details about what screwworm is, how it spreads, and the various dangers it poses. It's gross. I do not recommend. I will now try to return to political analysis and never think about this again.

Barney Frank is one of the smartest guys I've ever met and could forecast laws' 2nd order effects. He was also extremely cynical. I wonder if we will ever know if his efforts were designed to better the country or irritate an establishment that had forfeited its right to lead.

Seriously overthinking things, Vol. 1: In Elton John's 1973 song "Daniel", he sings "Daniel says it's (Spain) the best place he's ever seen". But, at the time, Spain was still under the Franco dictatorship. So was Elton's brother a fascist or Franco was not? Stay here for more logical cul-de-sacs.

This is my quarterly roll call of the US banks with $1B in assets with material (100 bp) deterioration in loan quality in the last quarter. There are many new names but the damage is still in pockets and not widespread - in other words, problems come from mistakes not economic weakness. The data comes from FDIC call reports but I've only listed the public banks; some notable private banks like Beal, Column, Cross River and Emigrant (somehow in FL rather than NYC now) all had issues. Glossary: ADC Construction ATB Across the board weakness C&I Commercial CON Consumer CRE Commercial Mortgage MF Multifamily OTH Other Banks with big jumps in loans 30-89 days delinquent are $XYZ (CONS), $BHRB (ATB), $BYFC (ATB), $INBC (C&I), $DE (yes, the tractor folks), $MGYR (ATB), and $SOUB again (ATB). As always, the ones with Across the Board weakness are very concerning. Yet again, the loophole for loans 90 days delinquent but still accruing was not used and has migrated to Restructured loans, which is being heavily utilized by $NODB. These banks had big jumps in nonaccrual loans were $AMAL (MF), $IBOC (ADC), $PBHC and $PFBC (both MF, CRE). The banks with big jumps in losses were $XYZ (C&I, CONS), $BMRC* (MF), $BNCC* (C&I), $CZNC (CRE), $FDVA* (C&I) and $WAL's well publicized fraud issues were widespread. The * indicate that nonaccruals fell due to the writedowns, as they should. Why use 100 bps as the cutoff? To get the list out faster. Decreasing the increment to 50bps would more than double the number of names to investigate more fully. $TBK and $KISB show up twice, dozens show up once.

$SBNC's 1Q is on its website and they lost $312/share due to stock fluctuations. Preprovision operating profits were up a bunch though. southernbank.com/wp-content/…

Why is $NBBK -10% today? Last night's results did not seem so heinous.

$SCYT call report is out. Earnings release is not. Looks like about $3.80 vs $2.73; credit quality now has a few blemishes vs previously pristine.

$DGL.AX out with revised financials after stopping trading for 6 months. The changes in the numbers are not significant. It seems that the accountants and lawyers got fat on the shareholders' dime for very little purpose. DGL is a chemical transport and logistics company.

Essentially, the internal strife in the West represents the merchant and warrior factions allying to crush the intelligentsia faction while it's still possible. When you view everything through that lens, interpreting the headlines and the reason they are written that way becomes more clear.

Really gobsmacked* that $TOWN sold a subsidiary that was slightly profitable and didn't factor into my evaluation of the stock at all for 10% of the whole company's market cap. Will force myself to run extra laps around the gym tonight as punishment. * flabbergasted

Life in the microcaps: $LARK announces that the annual report will be delayed because of an internal investigation. The stock is UP on light volume.

$FSDK is a small bank in northern OH. The record ROE in this century is 7% in 2023. Their proxy this year does not allow one to vote against the reelection of individual board members - it's either all or none. Never seen that before. Also, share holdings are not revealed. And it's not a holding company, so one can't check local Fed filings. So @dirtcheapbanks, sometimes there's a reason it's under half book value.

In light of all the posts of the shortage of refineries in Australia, this clip of Australia in the future shows that some were built at some point: youtube.com/watch?v=zjFkKJsy…

In light of the doxing of a mutual by a paranoid acquaintance, I've decided to do reciprocal self-dox. However, as politics might impinge on my investing activities, this channel will now become exclusively investing and baseball. An existing burner account will suffice for my other content. If you DM your LinkedIn profile to me, I will reply with mine, assuming that you're not in a bank's C-suite. I still need to resort to sarcasm occasionally. Community bankers don't do sarcasm well. Sending your profile to me is an implicit pledge not to forward my details to others. It may take a while for me to work through any backlog.