惠特尼：信用卡余额增速与通胀同步，通胀已过峰值

Meredith Whitney knows it's about baseball and baseball. You go up to the plate, and two thirds of the time you go back to the dugout. She has enjoyed over the years, a few times of putting the ball in play, definitive in finance and banking. Still Meredith Whitney Advisory Group today, what was it like the the acclaim you had? I'm going to call it 15 or 20 years ago. How did you handle just the day to day volume of Meredith Whitney Municipal Finance and Banking?

How do you handle it day to day? It was really awkward because, you know, my world had been really small covering banks and financials, and I loved it. So people within the industry knew who I was, and I had great relationships. And then all of a sudden there was so much more attention focused on me. And it's very it's it's uncomfortable. I was I wasn't used to it. I can't imagine how you guys are. Get used to it. Um, you know, it was it was.

You can't really decide what you and Sally Krajicek We're path breaking on, which is actually doing securities analysis. And then it got so much bigger than, let's show one of the huge Meredith Whitney successes. You got to play, you got to put the ball in play, and then you have to have the courage to hold on. I was in a meeting with Meredith ages ago. I could barely shave at the time. And, you know, there we were. And she says this company visa, it'll work out.

When did you sell visa? When did you get out? How did you not sell visa? I mean, it's just been, you know, back then it was just, you know, cash to credit. There was this huge tailwind to it. Um, and also it was like, I call it a mutual ization from the, from the bank. So it was a, it was a straight arrow. It was one of the easier ones and I call it the OG of fintech because it was really one of the first fintech. So after the financial crisis, the fintechs became a real thing.

Um, and decision intermediate, a lot of the things that banks weren't willing to do because they had PTSD from the financial crisis. You say visa. I think about credit cards. And I know, Meredith, you track consumer credit as a way to gauge the health of consumer spending and therefore the broader economy. Your view is that it's become increasingly more valuable because of the way that people use credit cards, their visas now, as opposed to 5 or 10 years ago.

What does that look like? Well, what's happened is post financial crisis, the banks pulled back dramatically from near prime and subprime. So they had all sorts of exposure. Wells was a big subprime lender. And so all of that has moved into the shadow banking system. Even companies like that, we're we're famously subprime, like Capital One has pulled way back and is focused on prime. So instead of revolving balances, people are spending and paying back monthly.

Now the balances don't don't reflect that. They grow, but they're growing at the pace of inflation. And so what I look at is at being a very good guide for where inflation is and when gas prices peaked In um, uh, in, uh, in my like mid, early, early May. Um, credit card spending had already peaked in early April. So and you've seen credit card spending decelerate from that time. And so these are just people spending absorbing the higher up higher prices and then just spending accordingly.

So I think I think the fed should look at their own data. This is data that comes out weekly. So you can see credit card balances. And it's really helpful. So I think I think inflation is in a rearview mirror. So it's like a charge card as opposed to a credit card that you pay the balance off of. That's exactly right. Okay. The charge plate rate for yourself. But that's also why all these big banks are chasing the higher income consumer.

Everyone's coming out with their own premium credit card because the fees are so lucrative. I mean, there's an underserved population here are people who actually need credit cards but can't actually get it, can't get it. And so what they're doing is they're going outside of the banking system, which means it's incredibly expensive. Uh, I say that people aren't living paycheck to paycheck, but payday two payday. So the fastest growing industry within fintech and financial services is advanced wage pay.

So if you've worked two days, you can access, uh, for a fee, uh, your, your, your wages for those two days. And what happens is people are using this service multiple times now. Uh, it was Dave and Chime that reported yesterday that was their fastest growing product. And so while on a two week basis, it looks like a 6.5% interest rate, but annualized that's over 160%. People aren't using this product one time, they're using multiple.

It hearkens back to our grandparents. It feels like it's almost, you know, depression kind of it's not about fancy personal finance and retirement. It's about a tough time out there. We're trying to get to the next paycheck. That's exactly right. So, uh, there was a study done, uh, in February that two thirds of people working are are living paycheck to paycheck and a quarter of, uh, of of, uh, labor force participants are struggling to pay their bills.

And so what they're doing is they're going to pawnshops, they're doing payday, um, uh, earn wage access by borrowing. Um, and they're or they're tapping into for the subprime in near prime, they can't even get home equity loans. So this is a phrase, you know, a feast. Well, this is the courage you had over decades. You know, talking about the two Americans out there. Help me out is a stereotype of James Diamond of a small bank on Park Avenue.

And buy now and pay later. I mean, to me, it's almost a revolution where the kids aren't using the charge cards like they used to in our personal finance does affirm. And those kind of companies, do they win? I think the buy now, pay later, replace the credit card. And what I never saw coming was the fact that the merchants are paying the fees right there. You know, they're paying a firm. They're paying. And so what happened in 2010?

And not to get too technical, but the card Friday, don't get that cool. When we were in college, we got solicited by every credit card out there. When we graduated, we had credit card debt. In 2010, that changed. So unless you got a co-sign by your parent, if you were under 21, you couldn't get a credit card. So this generation of Gen Z and younger millennials aren't used to revolving credit. So they're they're actually buy now, pay later is more appealing to them, even though sometimes it's the same thing.

How do they set up a credit history then if they eventually when they want to start becoming consumers in this economy and be able to apply for loans? They don't have a credit history, though. That's exactly. That's exactly right. Cause you're not even if they're even if it's the high end high earners and they're taking American Express, they're paying down their balance. So you're exactly right. It's going to be harder for them to get around.

I think of you in the clan I'm going to pick on Mike Mayo. We all love to pick on Mike Mayo. Great analyst out there. You people said they get through the great financial crisis and think we should own the banks as part of our retirement. Give us an update now. And where you think in the next ten years. Those successful investments. Where do they go? Well, it used to be the case, um, that the banks paid rich dividends.

That hasn't been the case. So banks have been buying back shares at really high valuations, which is not accretive for the for the banks. And they've been reticent to raise dividends because they don't know how long this, you know, this great earnings, uh, you know bonanza that the banks are in is going to last. So I think they're better vehicles to buy outside of the banks. Um that have rich, rich, uh, dividend yields in retirement.

You can have both rich in equities that average dividend yields, um, bonds are less certain. The 6040 portfolio hasn't been, you know, a gre

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