FINSUM
(New York)
The markets are not reflecting it, but sometimes it feels as though the writing is on the wall. The economy is bound to get worse before it gets better. We have been locked down long enough now that consumer habits are shifting and the spending patterns that prolong recessions are taking hold. Total US credit card debt has fallen 5% in five weeks—the fastest fall since the Great Recession. Auto loans are the same. On the whole, the more data comes out, the worse the picture gets.
FINSUM: Job losses have not yet peaked, so we are not even close to being on the road to recovery. We suspect it is going to take a long time to get back to where we were in February. We expect this will be a very wide U-shaped recovery.
(New York)
LPL has debuted a new model for breakaway advisors. The firm has decided to act on something long known—the logistics for setting up a new independent business are a major hurdle for wirehouse advisors who are considering breaking away. Accordingly, they have set up Strategic Wealth Services, which will handle all office set-up logistics for LPL and make sure there are zero out-of-pocket costs.
FINSUM: Kestra has also launched a similar service. Honestly, sounds like a smart play to smooth the transition, but watch for the “catch”, which isn’t apparent yet in what we’ve seen on this.
(Houston)
The oil market has been the story of the week for markets. The price of black gold fell to -$37 dollars on Monday. The market would technically pay you to take oil off its hands. Even at $20, most of the US oil industry is out of business, so what can the President and the government do to save the market? There are several options. For instance, the government could buy a hundred million barrels of oil for its strategic reserve, or it could create new storage space. However, the option the markets favor is for the government to buy mountains of oil while it is still in the ground, and have producers pay them back as they extract it.
FINSUM: If the government wants to save the US oil industry from a mass bankruptcy—and resulting rupture in the high yield market—it will need to take action.
If you have been confused about the exhaustion of the Paycheck Protection Program in the context of hearing so many stories that people have not received money, you are not alone. There has been a huge public outcry about the program. It is not just that so many big companies got the money, it is that so FEW others did. Less than 7% of businesses got approval.
At COVID Loan Tracker, we have been watching actual loan disbursements, not just approvals, by relying on fellow small business owners. The results have been stark. Thus far, only 8.1% of business report receiving any money. 28% say that they have received “approval” but have not gotten money yet. COVID Loan Tracker has had around 20,000 company submissions that track around $7 bn in PPP applications. See full stats here.
Here are the stats as of 6 am this morning (4/21/20):
PPP application approval rate: 28%
Percent of PPP applications actually received money: 8.1%
Median successful PPP application: 120,000
Median employees: 15
Percent of EIDL advance applications received money: 8.0%
Median money received: $5,000
Median employees: 5
COVID Loan Tracker was started by small business owners Duncan and Rita MacDonald-Korth to help their fellow small business owners understand when PPP and EIDL advance money starts flowing. The site works by crowdsourcing knowledge on applications and loan disbursements. Our goal is to help the small business community and empower journalists with the data they need to keep the government accountable.
(Houston)
Is the oil market a leading indicator of what is to come in the economy? Do we have way more supply and infrastructure to deliver it than there is demand to gobble it up? Oil was at $11 a barrel this morning, a mind boggling price. Stocks, on the other hand, have rallied hugely, to the point where it sometimes seems like investors have forgotten the country is shut down. Oil is obviously an idiosyncratic market, but if you really take a look at the situation, it is falling because of a big plunge in demand.
FINSUM: Is the oil market just smarter than equities right now? It does seem entirely possible that given the inevitable contraction in consumer spending, we may have more infrastructure to produce and delivery goods and services than we do demand, which means stocks could be in for a very rough patch.
(San Francisco)
The market has seen some very healthy (or perhaps not) gains in the last few weeks, but many are still worried about a plunge to come as the full impact of the COVID lockdown reverberates through the economy. Tech stocks have been big beneficiaries of the rally, with the big companies adding $250 bn to their market caps recently. Those gains look more sustainable than elsewhere too. Fund managers have been seeking refuge in the shares, and their business models look more defensible than most.
FINSUM: We are very bullish on big tech stocks. This whole lockdown is going to shift habits more towards ecommerce (and not just online retail, but food ordering etc), which means Google and Facebook are going to be able to collect their digital advertising tax on a bigger pot than ever.
(New York)
Dividends and buybacks have been looking very weak. Many buyback programs have been suspended and are likely to be under political pressure, while dividends are looking very at-risk because of likely poor earnings. So where to get some stable dividends? Barron’s ran a piece picking 40 of the safest dividends in the market. Here is a sampling: Nike, McDonald’s, Target, Home Depot, Coca-Cola, Caterpillar, Honeywell International.
FINSUM: This seems like a sound list. The only argument we might have is that Nike might not be able to maintain the hefty price increases consumers have stomached over the last five years.
One of the big questions in the small business world right now is “where is my PPP loan”. The SBA announced last week that the program had run out of money. Yet, the large majority of small business report that they have not received funds, even those that have been “approved”.
COVID Loan Tracker was founded for exactly this purpose—to find out when money from the PPP program actually starts flowing. The SBA says around 1.7m loans were approved, accounting for only 6.6% of the 30,000,000 small businesses in the country. Yet of the $349 bn “approved”, only about 7% of companies say they have received any funds.
PLEASE HELP SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS BY FILLING OUT THE FORM
As of 7:00 am this morning here is our data on actual disbursements:
Total Applied: 13,428 companies
Total received money: 941 companies
Percent receiving money: 6.97%
Total Dollars received: $320,000,000
Median Employees per successful applicant: 15
Median Loan size: $320,000
Median Length to receive loan: 9 days
COVID Loan Tracker was started by small business owners Duncan and Rita MacDonald-Korth to help their fellow small business owners understand when PPP and EIDL advance money starts flowing. The site works by crowdsourcing knowledge on applications and loan disbursements. Our goal is to help the small business community and empower journalists with the data they need to keep the government accountable.
HELP US KEEP THE DATA FLOWING
PLEASE HELP SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS BY FILLING OUT THE SURVEY
COVID Loan Tracker was started by small business owners Duncan and Rita MacDonald-Korth to help their fellow small business owners understand when and where PPP and EIDL advance money starts flowing. The site works by crowdsourcing knowledge on applications and loan disbursements. Our goal is to help the small business community and empower journalists with the data they need to keep the government accountable.
Retail is one of the largest sectors of the US economy. Tens of millions of workers earn their living in the sector and millions of small business owners employ them. However, this group—at once the most visible and vulnerable victims of the lockdown—are being left out in the cold by the PPP initiative. It has already been well established that “large” small businesses have fared much better in the Paycheck Protection Program, but retail small business owners may have even more to lose.
The common practice in commercial leasing to small businesses in the US is that landlords require tenants to put up personal guarantees in order to execute a lease. That means that if a business is unable to afford the rent, their own personal assets are the on hook to pay the landlord. Small business owners usually have no choice but to accept the terms—if they do not, they cannot lease the space. Since almost all landlords require this, small business owners are left with a stark choice: commit to a personal guarantee, or don’t open a business.
While it is clear at this point that smaller small business owners have not been helped by this program, that is doubly true for retail owners, for whom payroll is usually a minority expense compared to rent, utilities, and inventory. Accordingly, the small shop owners of America—hardware stores, clothing boutiques, nail salons, dry cleaners, cobblers, bar owners etc are at grave risk of losing not just their business, but their own assets, such as savings, houses, future income. They stand to lose everything.
COVID Loan Tracker, a union of over 17,000 small business owners representing billions of dollars in Paycheck Protection Program applications, demands that the federal government increase the funding for PPP to $1tn within 48 hours.
The first round of the Paycheck Protection Program has proven that the initial conception of the distribution of funds was flawed from top to bottom. The program has done very little to help genuine small businesses and instead has benefited large companies who have used subsidiary entities to benefit disproportionately and unfairly. The examples abound. Banks have incentivized large and important customers—those who need PPP money least—at the expense of the backbone of the nation: genuine small business owners, or those who run “small” small businesses and are an intimate part of the communities they inhabit and serve. These are the people whom the program was designed to protect, and those whom have been most failed by it. 93.3% of US small business owners have received no money from the first phase of PPP, amounting to 28,000,000 businesses. This is a wrong that must urgently be made right.
In addition to increasing funding to $1 tn, we propose the following rules:
1. 50% of the total dollars funded through the program must go to businesses with 50 employees or less (with the employee count taken as of February 15th, 2020)
2. The next 25% of the total dollars funded through the program must go to businesses with less than 150 employees (with the employee count taken as of February 15th, 2020)
3. The next 25% of the total dollars funded through the program must go to businesses with less than 250 employees (with the employee count taken as of February 15th, 2020)
4. Businesses with less than 50 employees will have their applications processed first, with applications for funding larger businesses only being approved once the full 50% has been allocated to those businesses with less than 50 employees.
5. Any remaining funding that exists after these disbursements will be allocated to those businesses with less than 50 employees.
6. No entity with any ownership association to any business with more than 250 employees may be given funding.
7. Every lender which takes part in the Paycheck Protection Program must make every effort to process and disburse all loan applications within 14 days of application receipt. Those lenders which are found to be routinely in failure of this standard shall have their processing fees reduced by 50% at a minimum.
This plan will ensure that the small business owners who need this money most—the smallest of small business owners—will get the funding they deserve. These small businesses are the heart and soul of every village, town, and city in this nation. What will our country become if we fail them?
Please back our proposal and help genuine small business owners.
Duncan and Rita MacDonald-Korth
Small business owners and founders of COVID Loan Tracker