COVID-19 lockdowns and subsequent stimulus payments left many Americans with extra time and cash. Among the effects was a surge in retail stock trading through zero-commission brokerages. This worked to drive up the share price of meme stocks and led to market volatility.

Many Maryland homeowners are increasingly faced with the threat of costly home repairs from extreme weather events. With climate change, these events are becoming more frequent and more intense. And that could mean bigger problems for homeowners – particularly those who don’t have the extra cash to handle repairs.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. SVB was taken over by the FDIC last Friday after depositors, fearing the bank would soon be unable to pay its debts, began withdrawing their money at an alarming rate.  Smith experts Cliff Rossi and Bill Longbrake recently spoke with Progyan Basu, clinical professor of Accounting and Information Assurance, about the impact of this failure on the banking industry and the economy as a whole.

Health safety for residents following the Feb. 3 Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, has been a top concern. Has it really been safe enough to return – both for the short- and long-term?

The Federal Reserve Board has engaged six of the biggest U.S. banks in a pilot Climate Scenario Analysis (CSA) to assess and “advance the ability of supervisors and banks to analyze and manage emerging climate-related financial risks.”

FTX postmortems have included Axios describing the cryptocurrency exchange as a “house of cards” comparable to Enron, Theranos, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Madoff Investment Securities. Plus, Moody’s writes the collapse “will radically transform the crypto ecosystem, further shaking trust and raising doubts around its ongoing prospects.”

Supply chain risks from weather and climate, financing infrastructure risk reduction, and how measurement affects management when it comes to climate reporting were among the topics discussed at the Smith School on October 27 and 28, 2022. Roughly 30 participants, including University of Maryland professors, students, and representatives from financial institutions like the World Bank, T. Rowe Price, and PricewaterhouseCoopers were in attendance. 

Hurricane Ian is now a tropical storm, but estimates for the storm’s Florida landfall included a million-plus homes at risk for damage, with overall damages and losses expected to top $67 billion, according to Bloomberg.

Experts from the University of Maryland and the investment management firm Conning will discuss a new approach to modeling climate risk to financial markets, in a free webinar at 9 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022, hosted by the Center for Financial Policy (CFP) at UMD’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

The Federal Reserve’s bank stress test is “capricious” and “arbitrary.” . . . “It’s inconsistent. It’s not transparent. It’s too volatile.” These descriptors came late last week from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon during his bank’s quarterly earnings call. It was a response to results of the latest, annual stress test – the Fed’s response to the 2008 financial crisis to help ensure that large, systemically important banks have sufficient capital buffers to withstand future crises.