Which VIX?
There are now several VIXs. The default VIX is really VIX30D.
The newest VIX1D is showing very high daily volatility as it is affected by volatility-decay as the 0DTE (near day-start) approach expiry and more 1DTE (near day-end) are picked up. So, one pattern is that it starts out at a lower value and ends with a higher value. Another is that VIX1D << VIX, except on unusual days.
Volatility has come down for stocks (US, EMs), oil, gold, but remains elevated for bonds. The anxiety/pressure may be building for bonds that may spillover suddenly into other areas.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quotes/^VIX1D,^VIX9D,^VIX,^VIX3M,^VIX1Y/view/v1

Tend to agree with Shipwreck. I’ve long kept a minuscule position in SPDN as part of a hedge position (SPDN = around 2% of portfolio). Doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, but tempers downside on some days and allows for taking more risk in other areas. (And I expect to lose $$ on it.) So the thought today was to sell SPDN and move temporarily into TAIL which more closely corresponds to changes in the VIX. I believe it would provide a better offset near term were someone so inclined. But decided against it. One problem is knowing when to move back out.
The charts back to 2020 show a reading of 16 on VIX to be very low. On a couple instances it dropped to around 10 - but didn’t stay there long. TAIL (etf) has been hampered in recent years by extremely low returns on treasury bonds in which it invests. So, I’m thinking that now with higher rates its better days (as an effective hedge) are probably ahead.
Heads Up - If you’re wondering what turned the markets around in the last hour today, it may be related to Mitch McConnell making a statement around 3 PM saying he believes the deficit dispute will be resolved in time to avoid default. Just my guess. As far as bearish sentiment today, that came in part from Evercore’s Ed Hyman interviewed on Bloomberg extensively this AM. (I actually copped some of Hyman’s concerns in writing my OP.)

@hondo Texas:
https://sacurrent.com/news/despite-tough-on-crime-claims-texas-ranks-as-one-of-most-dangerous-us-states-study-finds-30175384
https://usnews.com/news/best-states/texas
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/best-states-for-education
https://fox7austin.com/video/1108292
If all we care about is money when it comes to government, all we get is greed.

I've lived in TX for 17 years and moved from CA. TX today is very different than what it was in 2006. I wouldn't move to TX today. This is a state full of nut jobs at every level of government. Abbott and Patrick would make Taliban proud.
TX lack of income tax is more than offset by high property taxes, high insurance bills and bare minimum services for residents.

Any thoughts? ISTM there’s a lot of fear in the markets. A whole lot of things that could go wrong: China, Russia, a potential U.S. credit default, a steeply inverted yield curve / likely recession, troubled regional banks, raucous politics. So why is the “fear gage” not elevated?
I’m sure there’s a reason. Just not seeing it - VIX

One question people have asked is: Why didn’t Silicon Valley Bank hedge its interest-rate risk? SVB, like other regional banks, got a lot of deposits and invested them in long-term US government and agency bonds with fixed interest rates. As interest rates went up, those bonds lost value, eating through all of SVB’s equity. This was bad, people noticed, they withdrew their deposits, and SVB ran out of money. This was all pretty predictable, or at least a known risk. Why didn’t SVB hedge?
We have talked about a couple of answers to that question:

• 1) SVB had expenses, and it needed to make money. It had to invest its depositors’ cash to make that money. In 2022, if it had been earning short-term interest rates on that cash, it would not have made enough money to cover its expenses. The way that it made money was by investing at long-term interest rates, which were higher.[1] So it invested in long-term bonds, earned higher rates, and made enough money. “Hedging” would have meant swapping its long-term rates to short-term rates, which would have defeated its main purpose, making money. And in fact SVB did have some interest-rate hedges in place in early 2022; it took them off, though, to increase its profits.
• 2) SVB thought that it was hedged: It was buying long-term bonds, yes, but it was funding those purchases with deposits. Those deposits are technically very short-term: Depositors could take their money back at any time, and eventually they did. But it is traditional in banking to think of them as long-term, to think that the “deposit franchise” and the deep relationship between banker and customer would make customers unlikely to take their money out. SVB invested a lot in good customer service and good relations with its depositors; it also made loans to startups that required them to keep their cash on deposit at SVB. So it figured it had pretty long-term funding, and it matched that long-term funding with long-term assets. If it had swapped the assets to short-term rates, and then rates fell, it would lose money, and SVB thought that was the bigger risk. When SVB got rid of its interest-rate hedges in early 2022, it did so because it had become “increasingly concerned with decreasing [net interest income] if rates were to decrease”: It worried that the hedges would hurt it if rates fell.

Those are, I think, the main answers. But there is one other sort of dumb accounting answer. Most of SVB’s interest-rate risk came in its portfolio of “held to maturity” bonds. The idea here is that SVB bought a lot of bonds and planned to hold them until they matured. If it did that, the bonds — which were mostly US-government backed and so very safe — would pay back 100 cents on the dollar. So SVB didn’t need to worry about mark-to-market fluctuations in their value. If interest rates went up, and the value of these bonds dropped from 100 to 85 cents on the dollar, SVB could ignore it, because the value would definitely go back up to 100, as long as it held the bonds to maturity. (The problem is that it couldn’t: There was a run on the bank long before the bonds matured.)
This is a standard assumption in banking, that the bank is making loans or buying bonds and planning to hold them for life, so fluctuations in their market values don’t matter. And bank accounting reflects this: Held-to-maturity bonds are held on the balance sheet at their cost, and fluctuations in their market values do not affect the bank’s balance sheet, or its income statement, or its regulatory capital. And thus for a while last year SVB was mark-to-market insolvent — if you subtracted its liabilities from the market value of its assets, you got a negative number — but its regulatory capital was fine, because regulatory capital doesn’t subtract that way.
But now add hedging. SVB had, call it, $120 billion of held-to-maturity bonds. When rates went up, they lost something like $15 billion of market value.[2] If SVB had fully hedged those bonds — if it had put on $120 billion notional amount of swaps, say — then the hedges would have perfectly offset that loss. But if rates had instead gone down, the hedges would have lost money. Obviously last year rates probably had more room to rise than to fall, but even a 0.25% decline in long-term interest rates could have cost SVB something like $2 billion in this scenario.[3]
Of course in that scenario its bonds would have gained $2 billion of market value, offsetting the loss on the hedges. But this is where the accounting is a problem. If you have a held-to-maturity bond, its fluctuations in value do not affect your income statement or balance sheet: When the market price of the bond goes up (or down), the book value of your assets does not go up (or down), and you do not have income (or loss) from the change. But if you have an interest-rate swap, its fluctuations in value do affect your income statement and balance sheet: When its market value goes up (or down), the book value of your assets goes up (or down), and you have income (or loss). An interest-rate derivative is sort of naturally a mark-to-market asset, and so changes in its value are reflected in income.
And so if SVB had hedged and rates had gone down, it would have reported a huge loss: A $2 billion loss on interest-rate derivatives would have wiped out more than all of SVB’s profit last year. Hedging the held-to-maturity bond portfolio would have made SVB economically less risky, but it would have made its reported financial results far more volatile. The hedge would have made SVB look riskier. And banking is a business of confidence, so you don’t want to look riskier. (Also: The hedge would have made SVB’s regulatory capital more volatile, and banking is also a business of regulatory capital.)
Now, an obvious response is: “This is dumb, why should hedging make you look riskier?” And accountants are aware of that, and there is a thing called “hedge accounting” where you basically get to take some asset and the derivative that you use to hedge it, offset them against each other, and neutralize the accounting effect of fluctuations in their values. The hedge makes your financial statements look less risky, which makes sense.
The problem is that this is specifically not allowed for held-to-maturity assets. PricewaterhouseCoopers explains:

The notion of hedging the interest rate risk in a security classified as held to maturity is inconsistent with the held-to-maturity classification under ASC 320,[4] which requires the reporting entity to hold the security until maturity regardless of changes in market interest rates. For this reason, ASC 815-20-25-43(c)(2) indicates that interest rate risk may not be the hedged risk in a fair value hedge of held-to-maturity debt securities.

Again, here the accounting standards line up with the way banks have historically thought about themselves, which is basically that they are in the business of holding long-term assets for the long term. “Why would a bank hedge interest-rate risk on its held-to-maturity portfolio,” the accountants ask, “if it is just going to hold that portfolio to maturity?”
That said, you can hedge your bonds that you treat as “available-for-sale,” and if you do that you will get hedge accounting treatment, so your income statement (and capital) will look less volatile rather than more. (This is what SVB was doing when it did have interest-rate hedges in place last year.) And if you are a US bank in spring of 2023, you will be keenly focused on the risk of rising interest rates, perhaps more keenly focused than you were back when interest rates were about to rise rapidly. Never too late I guess. Bloomberg’s Annie Massa reports:

Charles Schwab Corp. started using derivatives to hedge interest rate-related risk during the first quarter.
The derivatives had a notional value of $3.9 billion as of March 31, the Westlake, Texas-based company said in a regulatory filing Monday.
Schwab, which runs both brokerage and bank businesses, has been ensnared in the tumult ravaging US regional banks after the Federal Reserve embarked on its most aggressive interest rate tightening cycle in decades last year.
The firm confronted swelling paper losses on securities it owns and grappled with dwindling deposits as customers moved cash into accounts that earn more interest. Schwab executives have said those withdrawals will abate. The pace of cash withdrawals is already starting to slow, Chief Financial Officer Peter Crawford said in a recent statement.

It has $3.9 billion of swaps to hedge $3.9 billion of available-for-sale securities, out of a total of about $141 billion of available-for-sale and $170 billion of held-to-maturity securities.

Here's that post by a reader on depositaccounts.com:
https://www.depositaccounts.com/banks/first-republic-bank.html#promo52225
Vanguard and Fidelity and probably many others charge $1/$1,000 face value commission for CDs and bonds traded on the secondary market. Their websites will tell you the final YTM before you place your order.
The poster doesn't say why a broker would take any longer to distribute money received from the FDIC than money received from banks upon maturity of brokered CDs. Further, if JPMorgan Chase is maintaining those interest rates then it is assuming responsibility for the CDs. OTOH, if Chase is not maintaining those rates, then payout would be "immediate" (i.e. one would be exercising one's right to redeem the CDs w/o penalty rather than accept a lower rate going forward). But that would mean a lower yield - basically just the discount less the commission.

Just a note that in addition to the actual Financial Health Rating, there is a description/overview description of the bank being reviewed. You should be looking at both the Rating and the Overview of the Bank. For example, with Republic Bank, this is that review as part of the Financial Health Rating:
"Related Posts
Goodbye First Republic Bank -- Hello Chase Bank - 5/1/2023
Chase won the bidding. Chase has assumed all the deposits of First Republic Bank. All First Republic accounts are now Chase Bank accounts.
First Republic Bank And Signature Bank CDs With Pre-Commission Y-T-Ms Up To 6.824% - 3/15/2023
Numerous CDs issued by First Republic and Signature are available in the secondary market.at Vanguard. They tend to have short maturity dates, so commissions will significantly reduce the yields to maturity. They are all trading at discounts. The FDIC would pay off at par. But once the FDIC transmits funds to the brokerage, it will be a while before the funds appear in customers' accounts."

Professor Tribe makes a nice case for disregarding the debt ceiling, but he is not making the argument that the 1917 debt ceiling law is unconstitutional.
As the Treasury writes:

The authority to borrow on the full faith and credit of the United States is vested in the Congress by the Constitution. Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 2, states "[The Congress shall have power]…to borrow money on the credit of the United States." In 1917, Congress, pursuant to the Second Liberty Bond Act, delegated authority to the Treasury Department to borrow, subject to a limit. This action mitigated the need to seek congressional authority on each issuance, providing operational convenience. The debt limit essentially achieved its modern form in the early 1940s.

If that delegation (subject to a debt ceiling) were unconstitutional, then all existent debt (i.e. all debt incurred since 1917) would be unconstitutional.
In order for the debt to be legal, it would be necessary to void the debt ceiling portion of the law without voiding the law in its entirety. Splitting a law like this is possible only if the law is deemed severable. Severability depends upon intent and whether the remaining portion of a law can make sense absent the portion that is excised.
Here, Congress ceded (delegated) some of its Article I authority to the executive branch, conditionally. The intent was to slacken the borrowing reins (for convenience, as noted above) without completely releasing the reins. IMHO that intent is thwarted by delegating borrowing authority absent constraints. It is not obvious that the debt ceiling could be severed from the statute. But as I indicated, that's not Tribe's argument.
Rather, he is analogizing with Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, that under certain exigent circumstances parts of the Constitution may be disregarded. While I'm inclined to accept that argument, his reference to Lincoln may not be on point.
The Constitution explicitly provides for the suspension of habeas corpus under certain conditions, as explained in the piece linked to from Tribe's column. The issue with Lincoln was not whether suspension of a law (habeas corpus, a law enshrined in the Constitution) was legal. Rather, the issue was who had the authority to exercise that escape clause - the executive branch, the legislative branch, or either.
Tribe might have been more persuasive by quoting

Justice Jackson's well-known words, the Constitution is not "a suicide pact." Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 37, 69 S.Ct. 894, 93 L.Ed. 1131 (1949) (dissenting opinion in a case involving the First Amendment). The Constitution itself takes account of public necessity. Ziglar v. Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. 1843, 1883, 198 L. Ed. 2d 290 (2017).

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/senior_lawyers/publications/voice_of_experience/2022/july-2022/quarantine-masks-and-the-constitution/.

A tangent for regional banks and credit unions; not the large investment banks.
Our cu and area banks are still offering .2% more or less for a standard yield for a saving or checking account. Our credit union has a 'high yield' checking account with a yield of 4.15%, on the first $10K......but one must have 15 transactions each month on the account (debit card transactions, etc) and also be set up for paying bills electronically.
The CD rates are very low, too.
Only thinking out loud with words that one would think there are 'x' number of transactions at our credit union and/or banks where there is a decent profit spread between what is being paid depositors and loan profits for vehicles.
With a high quality credit rating the credit union's loan rate for a 2019 - 2023 vehicle is 5.54% for a 48 month period. A very large profit spread, eh; if the loan doesn't default.
Sidenote: Tis recently reported that the average new vehicle MSRP is $46,000. Considering our cu's 48 month loan rate, one finds a $1,081 monthly payment. YIKES. I have not attempted to discover the current loan default rate for vehicles. Additionally the cu's and banks are competing with low loan rates from the manufactures and their lease programs, too.
Conclusion, I suspect, is how much profit is really being made with these type of loans for regional banks and cu's.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1870117/000005193123000480/cgfit485a.htm
Capital Group Core Bond ETF
Capital Group Short Duration Municipal Income ETF

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/44402/000089843223000188/form497.htm
Neuberger Berman Greater China Equity Fund
Neuberger Berman Global Real Estate Fund
497 1 form497.htm
Neuberger Berman Equity Funds® (“Equity Funds”)
Neuberger Berman Greater China Equity Fund
Neuberger Berman Global Real Estate Fund
Supplement to the Summary Prospectuses and Prospectuses, each dated December 19, 2022, and the Statement of Additional Information, dated December 19, 2022, as amended and restated March 3, 2023, as may be further amended and supplemented
On March 30, 2023, the Board of Trustees of the Equity Funds approved:
● the conversion of Neuberger Berman Greater China Equity Fund (the “Greater China Equity Fund” or “Mutual Fund”) to a newly organized series of Neuberger Berman ETF Trust (the “China Equity ETF” or “ETF”); and
●the conversion of Neuberger Berman Global Real Estate Fund (the “Global Real Estate Fund” or “Mutual Fund”) to a newly organized series of Neuberger Berman ETF Trust (the “Global Real Estate ETF” or “ETF”) (collectively, the “Conversions”).
Each Conversion will be effected through the reorganization of the Mutual Fund into the ETF.
After the Conversion, it is anticipated that the China Equity ETF will have a different principal investment strategy, will not be sub-advised by Green Court Management Limited and will have different portfolio managers than Greater China Equity Fund. It is anticipated that shortly before the Conversion, investment professionals of Neuberger Berman will assume day-to-day portfolio management responsibilities for the Greater China Equity Fund. More information regarding these changes will be provided to shareholders of the Greater China Equity Fund in a combined information statement/prospectus.
After the Conversion, it is anticipated that the Global Real Estate ETF will continue to have the same portfolio managers and will be managed in a substantially similar manner as the Global Real Estate Fund.
It is anticipated that prior to the Conversion Class A and Class C shares of each of Global Real Estate Fund and Greater China Equity Fund will be converted into Institutional Class. It is expected that Institutional Class of Neuberger Berman Global Real Estate Fund will remain open to new purchases until shortly before its Conversion. Institutional Class of Neuberger Berman Greater China Equity Fund will continue to remain closed to new purchases until its Conversion.
Each ETF will not commence investment operations prior to its Conversion and each ETF’s shares are not currently being offered to the public, nor have they been approved for listing on any exchange. It is anticipated that each Conversion will occur during the third quarter of 2023.
Prior to the Conversion, existing shareholders of each of Greater China Equity Fund and Global Real Estate Fund will receive a combined information statement/prospectus describing in detail both the Conversion and the respective ETF involved in the Conversion. It is anticipated that neither Conversion will require shareholder approval. After the Conversion, it is anticipated that each ETF’s shares will be offered to the public and traded on an exchange.
It is anticipated that each Conversion will qualify as a tax-free reorganization for federal income tax purposes and that shareholders will not recognize any gain or loss in connection with each
Conversion, except to the extent that they receive cash in connection with the liquidation of any fractional shares received in a Conversion.
Effective March 31, 2023, Rule 12b-1 fees on all applicable share classes for Greater China Equity Fund and Global Real Estate Fund will be waived.
The date of this supplement is March 31, 2023.
Please retain this supplement for future reference.
Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers LLC
1290 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10104
Shareholder Services
800.877.9700
Institutional Services
800.366.6264
www.nb.com
Registration filing:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1506001/000089843223000269/0000898432-23-000269-index.htm

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/915802/000139834423009132/fp0083446-1_497.htm
497 1 fp0083446-1_497.htm
FINANCIAL INVESTORS TRUST
Highland Resolute Fund
Supplement dated May 8, 2023
to the
Summary Prospectus, Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information,
each dated February 28, 2022
On May 5, 2023, the Board of Trustees (the “Board”) of the Financial Investors Trust (the “Trust”), based upon the recommendation of Highland Associates, Inc. (the “Adviser”), the investment adviser to the Highland Resolute Fund (the “Fund”), a series of the Trust, has determined to close and liquidate the Fund. The Board concluded that it would be in the best interests of the Fund and its shareholders that the Fund be closed and liquidated as a series of the Trust, with an effective date on or about May 19, 2023 (the “Liquidation Date”).
The Board approved a Plan of Termination, Dissolution, and Liquidation (the “Plan”) that determines the manner in which the Fund will be liquidated. Pursuant to the Plan and in anticipation of the Fund’s liquidation, the Fund will be closed to new purchases effective as of the close of business on May 8, 2023. However, any distributions declared to shareholders of the Fund after May 16, 2023, and until the close of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on the Liquidation Date will be automatically reinvested in additional shares of the Fund unless a shareholder specifically requests that such distributions be paid in cash. Although the Fund will be closed to new purchases as of May 8, 2023, you may continue to redeem your shares of the Fund after May 8, 2023, as provided in the Prospectus. Please note, however, that the Fund will be liquidating its assets on or about the Liquidation Date.
Pursuant to the Plan, if the Fund has not received your redemption request or other instruction prior to the close of business on the Liquidation Date, your shares will be redeemed, and you will receive proceeds representing your proportionate interest in the net assets of the Fund as of the Liquidation Date, subject to any required withholdings. As is the case with any redemption of fund shares, these liquidation proceeds will generally be subject to federal and, as applicable, state and local income taxes if the redeemed shares are held in a taxable account and the liquidation proceeds exceed your adjusted basis in the shares redeemed. If the redeemed shares are held in a qualified retirement account such as an IRA, the liquidation proceeds may not be subject to current income taxation under certain conditions. You should consult with your tax adviser for further information regarding the federal, state and/or local income tax consequences of this liquidation that are relevant to your specific situation.
All expenses incurred in connection with the transactions contemplated by the Plan, other than the brokerage commissions associated with the sale of portfolio securities, will be paid by the Adviser.
Please retain this supplement with your Summary Prospectus, Prospectus and
Statement of Additional Information.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/802716/000168386323004704/f25581d1.htm
Victory INCORE Fund for Income
Victory INCORE Investment Grade Convertible Fund
Excerpt:
...1.Effective September 1, 2023 (the "Effective Date"), the Victory INCORE Fund for Income and the Victory INCORE Investment Grade Convertible Fund (the "Funds") will change their names and become known as the Victory Fund for Income and the Victory Investment Grade Convertible Fund, respectively. All references to the Funds throughout each Prospectus and SAI will then be referred to as the Victory Fund for Income and the Victory Investment Grade Convertible Fund, respectively...

Funds affected:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1691994/000139834423009152/fp0083461-3_497.htm
Fiera Capital International Equity Fund
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1691994/000139834423009155/fp0083461-1_497.htm
Fiera Capital Global Equity Fund
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1691994/000139834423009151/fp0083461-2_497.htm
Fiera Capital U.S. Equity Long-Term Quality Fund

The Tribe article in NYT is very informative and makes a strong case that in fact it is the debt ceiling law that is unconstitutional, and the 14th gives Biden a clear reasonable and legal way to ignore the crazies.
Not only can the US debt "not be questioned" but he points out that passing a budget requiring deficit spending essentially guts the 1917 debt ceiling law.
No other country in tht world manages it's finances this way

ESG investors tend to reward companies with good ESG scores (like green-energy companies) and penalize companies with bad ESG scores (like oil companies).
IMHO most investors just look for an ESG label slapped onto a company or fund. Many ratings services rate companies relative to their industry peers, meaning that you'll have as many top rated oil companies (percentage-wise) as any other sector.

Our assessment is industry relative, using a seven-point AAA-CCC scale.

MSCI, ESG Ratings Methodology, April 2023.

Hess Corporation (NYSE: HES) has received a AAA rating in the MSCI environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings for 2021 after earning AA ratings from MSCI ESG for 10 consecutive years.

Hess press release, Oct 11, 2021.

BlackRock remains a signatory to the net zero initiative and its iShares ESG Aware MSCI USA ETF holds a host of oil and gas producers, including Exxon, which has a larger weighting than Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc., and Chevron, which has a larger weighting than Walt Disney Co. Similarly, Exxon is the seventh-largest holding in the SPDR S&P 500 ESG ETF, which also owns Schlumberger, ConocoPhillips and EOG Resources Inc

Bloomberg, ESG Investors' Best Intentions Slam Into Surging Oil Stocks, March 15, 2023 (via FA-Mag, no paywall)
There's ESG investing from a risk perspective (i.e. use ESG considerations in evaluating the business prospects for companies- how well are they mitigating risks); ESG investing from what I choose to call a "feel good" perspective (negative screens - I won't personally profit from bad acts); impact investing (improving behaviour of companies, improving their business prospects). These are all different, though they're all labeled (marketed) as ESG.
If your cost of capital is high, near-term projects are worth relatively more and long-term projects are worth relatively less, so you will focus on the short term
This a very serious issue in developing countries that cannot afford long term investments. The world (IMF, etc.) needs to establish better lending policies. Instead, we have oil companies putting money into short term foreign projects in exchange for building roads (that are used to transport equipment) and schools and internet infrastructure and providing needed jobs, turning villages into company towns.

In this period of looking at riskiness of Banks, and determining which banks to use for deposits in such things as CDs, I thought it may be of some interest to look at information associated with Financial Health Ratings of Banks. At Schwab, there are several banks offering 1 year CDs for 5.15%, but their Financial Health Ratings vary greatly between each bank.
See the excerpt below:
"The DepositAccounts.com Health Rating"
"As one of the most comprehensive online publications dedicated to consumer banking and deposit product information, DepositAccounts.com covers every federally insured bank and credit union to track around 275,000 deposit rates. Prompted by the global financial crisis in 2008, many people took a second look at the health of their financial institutions. While the FDIC and National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) maintain a watch list of banks and credit unions that may be at risk of failing, these lists are not available to the public but their quarterly raw financial numbers are. DepositAccounts uses this data to evaluate the financial health of over 10,000 banks and credit unions with some of these key factors:
Capitalization
Capitalization is a bank or credit union’s available capital, which is determined by subtracting liability value from their asset value.
Deposit Growth
As people continue to put money in a bank or credit union, that growth increases the money available to keep a strong balance sheet. Especially if the total deposits have been increasing over time, this is a high indicator of confidence in the financial institution and its stability.
Texas Ratio
The Texas Ratio was developed to easily measure the status of a financial institution’s credit troubles, where the higher ratios warn of severe credit problems. The number is determined by comparing the total value of at risk loans (loans that are more than 90 days past due and not backed by the government) to the total value of funds the bank has on hand to cover those loans."
Personally, I look at this information closely before I choose to invest in a CD at any given bank. I am aware that FDIC insures banks, up to a limited deposit amount, and I stay below those deposit amounts with my CD investments, but I don't want the drama of having a CD in a bank that has a higher risk and a lower Financial Health Rating.

We talked last Thursday about two theories of banking, which I called Theory 1 and Theory 2. Theory 1 is that banks borrow short to lend long: Bank deposits are short-term funding, they get paid a variable market rate of interest, and they can disappear overnight if depositors worry about a bank’s stability or just get a better deal elsewhere. Theory 2 is that banks actually borrow long to lend long: Bank deposits are part of a long-term relationship, and much of what banks do — build branches, cross-sell products, offer ATMs and online banking — is designed to make those deposits sticky, so that their cost doesn’t go up when interest rates go up. Theory 2 is the traditional theory of banking; it’s why there are branches. Theory 1 is the standard theory of modern capital markets; it’s why, when Silicon Valley Bank failed due to taking too much interest-rate risk, lots of people were like “how did they not see that coming” or “why didn’t they hedge?”
Part of my goal on Thursday was to try to answer those questions, to suggest that Theory 2 really is kind of how banks (and bank regulators) think about the problem. (“Why didn’t they hedge their interest-rate risk?” Well, they had long-duration liabilities, in the form of deposits, and they matched them with long-duration assets, in the form of Treasury and agency bonds, so they were hedged; they just got the duration of their deposits wrong.)
And part of my goal was to think about why Theory 2 stopped working in 2023, why deposits weren’t sticky, why banks like Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank faced massive runs and disappeared when rates went up. My speculations included better availability of information (bank deposits used to be sticky in part because it was harder to pay attention to them), a more widespread mark-to-market financial culture, the hangover of 2008, and the decline of relationship businesses generally:

In a world of electronic communication and global supply chains and work-from-home and the gig economy, business relationships are less sticky and “I am going to go into my bank branch and shake the hand of the manager and trust her with my life savings” doesn’t work. “I am going to do stuff for relationship reasons, even if it costs me 0.5% of interest income, or a slightly increased risk of losing my money” is no longer a plausible thing to think. Silicon Valley Bank’s VC and tech customers talked lovingly about how good their relationships with SVB were, after withdrawing all their money. They had fiduciary duties to their own investors to keep their money safe! Relationships didn’t matter.

One thing that I would say is that if this is right and you take it seriously, then it is pretty bad news for US regional banks. “Banking is an inherently fragile business model” is a thing that people say from time to time (when there are bank runs), but nobody quite means it. They mean something like “from a strictly financial perspective, looking at a balance sheet that mismatches illiquid long-term assets with overnight funding, banking is insanely fragile, and the whole business model of banking is about building long-term relationships with slow-moving price-insensitive depositors so that the funding is not as short-term, and the business is not as fragile, as it looks.” But if the relationship aspect doesn’t work anymore, then banking really is just extremely fragile. Without the relationships, banks are just highly levered investment funds that make illiquid risky hard-to-value investments using overnight funding. That can go wrong in lots of ways!
At Bits About Money last week, Patrick McKenzie had a deep dive on Theory 2, on “Deposit franchises as natural hedges.” He lays out why banks thought that they could take a lot of interest-rate risk despite their short-term funding; he explains the theory that a deposit franchise — the relationship that banks have with their customers that allows them to keep deposits even as rates go up — is a valuable thing and a natural hedge against rising rates.[5] And he too speculates on why that didn’t work as well as they expected. He is, I think, more pessimistic than I was:

For retail, for a period of years—years!—we took the sweat and smiles business, the work of literal decades, and we—for the best of reasons!—said We Do Not Want This Thing. That very valuable thing was, like other valuable things like churches and birthday parties and school, a threat to human life. And so we put it aside. We aggressively retrained customers to use digital channels over the branch experience. We put bankers at six thousand institutions in charge of teaching their loyal personal contacts that you can now do about 80% of your routine banking on their current mobile app or 95% on Chase’s. And then we were shocked, shocked how many people denied the most compelling reason to use their current bank and shown the most compelling reason to bank with Chase switched.
With regards to sophisticated customers, the answer is not primarily about mobile apps or how difficult it is to wire money out of an account. It is about businesses making rational decisions to protect their interests using the information they had. Sophisticated businesses are induced to bring their deposit businesses, which frequently include large amounts of uninsured deposits, in return for a complex and often bespoke bundle of goods they receive from their banks. The ability to offer that complex and bespoke bundle is part of the sweat and smiles of building a deposit franchise. …
Why did they suddenly trust their banks less about the near-term availability of the bundle? Contagion? Social media? I feel these are misdiagnoses. Their banks suffered from two things: their ability to deliver the bundle was actually impaired. They had “bad facts”, in lawyer parlance. Insolvency is not a good condition for a bank to be in.
And those bad facts got out quickly, not because of social media and not because of a cabal but simply because news directly relevant to you routes to you much faster in 2023 than in 2013. There is no one single cause for that! Media are better and more metrics-driven! Screentime among financial decisionmakers is up! Pervasive always-on internetworking in industries has reached beyond early adopters like tech and caught up with the mass middle like e.g. the community that is New York commercial real estate operators.

The whole relationship aspect of banking is devalued; rational economic decisionmaking based on mark-to-market asset values has become more important. This makes banks fragile. What makes banks something other than highly levered risky investment funds is their relationships, and that support is weakening.
Elsewhere at Substack, here is Byrne Hobart on “ The Relationship-Transactional-Relationship Business Cycle,” which is I suppose more optimistic:

Transaction economics include the flow of object-level decisions—do we buy this Google click, spin up that EC2 instance, or accept this Stripe transaction—and a stock of expectations and trust slowly built up on both sides. It's essentially a form of reputational capital, and a company that's betting most of its revenue or operations on a counterparty that they can't have a conversation with is, in some abstract sense, undercapitalized.