Jonathan Weil
Appearances
WSJ What’s News
Banks Warn of Risk to U.S. Economy Because of Tariffs
That can be really good if you run a trading desk. Not so good if the volatility goes so berserk that nobody wants to trade anything anymore.
WSJ What’s News
Banks Warn of Risk to U.S. Economy Because of Tariffs
Well, the guidance that they have given is much more cautious than it was, say, three months ago. Morgan Stanley today, they're generally bullish. That's an investment bank. It's a different type of business model than Wells Fargo or JP Morgan.
WSJ What’s News
Banks Warn of Risk to U.S. Economy Because of Tariffs
One of the things that JP Morgan said, their CFO on their earnings call today, said the way these things are all about mathematical models, it's not just looking at a loan to see if that particular loan is more or less likely to default. They said that they haven't seen, at least through the first quarter, hadn't seen any deterioration in the credit quality, broadly speaking, of their loan book.
WSJ What’s News
Banks Warn of Risk to U.S. Economy Because of Tariffs
So we've seen some uptick in the credit losses at some of these banks. But the really big move, if things went haywire, would be showing up in the second quarter. And the answer they get about the outlook isn't necessarily very satisfying because they're in the same boat that we are. They have much more data that they can look at. But the conclusion is the same. We don't know.
WSJ What’s News
Banks Warn of Risk to U.S. Economy Because of Tariffs
The things they're going to be monitoring are the usual things banks monitor. Are borrowers more likely to default on their credit cards, on their loans? What's going to be happening to mergers and acquisitions and deal volumes? They're explicitly saying that they think that those will be going down. They're expecting a lot more volatility. That has a lot of trade-offs.