Torsten Slok – Chief Economist at private equity giant Apollo Global – believes the credit default cycle is already underway (from Bloomberg on July 13)…

Corners of the consumer and corporate market are beginning to feel the pain from the Federal Reserve’s ultra-aggressive rate hikes, even though broader macroeconomic indicators are still showing signs of strength, says Apollo’s Torsten Slok. “A default cycle has started,” the chief economist told Bloomberg TV Thursday, pointing to rising delinquency rates for auto loans

Corporate bankruptcy filings continue to surge (from The Daily Spark on June 28)…

Weekly data for corporate bankruptcy filings has started to meaningfully deteriorate in recent weeks, see chart below. The faster speed of slowing in the weekly data is not consistent with the gradual rise in the monthly default rates seen in HY, IG, and loans. Continue reading here.

History says it’s still too soon to dismiss the significance of last fall’s Treasury yield curve inversion (from the Financial Times on July 5)…

The puzzle here, as we see it, is how to balance evidence of a remarkably strong economy against the history of past rate-rising cycles and the accompanying inverted yield curves. First quarter 2023 real GDP was almost 2 per cent, estimates for second-quarter growth look similarly healthy, the housing market is resilient, consumer confidence is

Here’s an undervalued small-cap oil and gas stock with a potentially bullish upside catalyst (from Bison Interests on July 18)…

At Bison, we look for heavily discounted oil and gas equities with good assets, survivable balance sheets, proven management teams, and imminent catalysts to help close valuation dislocations in public markets. This sometimes involves buying equities with core businesses trading at low valuations that also have secondary assets that could be worth a significant portion

Turkey could soon be a “buy” for western investors (from KEDM’s Monday Monitor on July 17)…

With his reign secured, Erdogan banned the Turkish CB from intervening in the currency market. Now you probably seen Erdy and Putin bff pictures, and he shrewdly used his relationship with the Russian President to get more gas and oil then he ever dreamt of. (Even gave free gas for a month to the entire

A bullish case for India’s largest bank (from Lyn Alden Investment Strategy on July 9)…

HDFC Bank (HDB) of India is a stock I’ve been bullish on for years, although there were times where I increased or reduced exposure to it based on valuation. The company just completed the merger-acquisition of its parent company at the start of this month, which creates one of the largest banks in the world