(New York)

New data emerging today is for the first time showing the scale of the devastation that has occurred to the US economy. Industrial production fell 5.4% in March, the worst fall since 1946. Headline retails sales fell a whopping 8.7%. Both data points were worse than economists predicted.

FINSUM: What is really worrying here is that large parts of the US were not even shutdown until the very end of March. This means April’s numbers are likely to be a complete washout. Judging by indexes, this scared markets.

(San Francisco)

Apple just debuted a new phone model and they appear to have made a very wise decision. The company unveiled its new version of the iPhone SE, its lowest end model of the iPhone, for just $399, the same price as the original SE model in 2016. However, this phone is significantly beefed up, and Apple says its Bionic Chip is the “fastest chip in a smartphone”. The pricing, of course, comes at a time of major economic hardship for most Americans.

FINSUM: This is a wise play both from a revenue generation standpoint and a branding standpoint. It would be hard for most of the US to justify a $1,000+ upgrade right now.

https://www.covidloantracker.com/

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.

PLEASE HELP SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS BY FILLING OUT THE FORM

Today the site is announcing an exciting new development—all stats will be available in real-time! Data on successful PPP loans and EIDL advances, as well as on all applications, will be live and in real-time on COVID Loan Tracker. This mean small business owners and the press can get live and updated information 24 hours per day.

SPREAD THE WORD!

Additionally, the new automated reporting will feature data visualization tools which help to understand how and where money is flowing, such as heat mapping states where the most money is flowing.

According to COVID Loan Tracker, big banks are not doing a good job getting money moving to those who have applied for PPP loans. In their latest update yesterday afternoon, with around 8,000 companies reporting around $3.5 bn of loans from all 50 states, the large majority are getting approved through small and regional banks. In fact, JP Morgan Chase seems to be the only bank getting any applications approved, as Wells Fargo and Bank of America are showing very few approvals on COVID Loan Tracker, with Citi showing none.

PLEASE HELP US HELP SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS BY FILLING OUT THE FORM

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.

SPREAD THE WORD!

Small and regional banks have been leading the charge in approvals all over the country. This is reportedly because many small and regional banks were already set up to process SBA loans as part of their normal course of business before the COVID-19 outbreak. This means they were already familiar and connected to the E-Tran system being used to process the loans by the SBA.

Please help us keep the data flowing!

(New York)

Some investment banks are saying that the worst of the volatility is over and that markets have bottomed (e.g. Goldman Sachs). However, different approaches give very different valuations. For instance, a new research opinion from Vincent Deluard, head of global macro strategy at INTL FCStone, says that fair value for the S&P 500 is 1,800, or more than 35% below today’s value. The method that comes to that conclusion is a discounted cash flow method that tries to derive the value of future cash flows.

FINSUM: In our opinion, this is a total crap shoot (and even more so right now) as the market is being driven by emotion and speculation to an even larger degree than usual.