MMM That’s Not Good

Accounting is the practice of using numbers to tell the story of a company’s past, present, and future. For an investor, these numbers and stories are the foundation of all decisions, so it’s imperative that they’re done correctly. And generally, they are.

But lately, there’s been an uptick in the number of accounting mishaps making their way into the financial markets. Today we got a few more instances of this problem, so let’s take a look. 📝

When regular people talk about March Madness, they’re referring to college basketball. But when traders and investors talk about March Madness, they’re referring to a regional bank stock imploding.

We’re about a year out from three regional banks failing and/or being rescued, and now the sharks are circling New York Community Bancorp. The long story short, until today, is that the regional lender has too much commercial real estate exposure, weak internal controls over financial reporting, and a new CEO trying to right the ship. 🗞️

Plug Power hasn’t given investors much to be excited about over the last few years, but today’s news has people (and its stock price) charged up again. So let’s see what happened. 👇

The alternative-energy company, which provides hydrogen fuel cell technology, finalized a deal with the Department of Energy (DOE) for a $1.6 billion loan facility. This critical funding comes at a time when the company has faced immense liquidity issues, issuing a going-corn warning last quarter and disclosing a secondary share offering of up to $1 billion. 💸