Queens Research: short videos on bond yields, interest rates and the dollar
Short videos on bond yields, interest rates and the dollar. New videos come with a written breakdown: every market term explained and every figure sourced. Educational content only.
Video breakdowns
Margin Debt Explained: $1.45 Trillion Borrowed, and the Rules Behind It: Investors owe their brokers $1.45 trillion. That is margin debt: money borrowed from brokers against the securities in margin accounts, as FINRA reported it for the end of August 2026. A year earlier it was $1.06 trillion, and in June it reached $1.5 trillion, the highest in FINRA's table, which starts in 1997. How margin works with an illustrative $10,000 example, the 25% rule and the margin call, what the official data show about the three big falls since 1997, and three ways to read the number. Margin debt is plumbing, not a forecast.
The $250,000 Bank Deposit Limit: Where It Came From and What It Covers: Since 1 January 1934, the FDIC says, no depositor has lost a penny of insured funds. That promise comes with a limit: $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category. The front pages of March 1933, how the limit grew from $2,500 to $250,000, what it covers and what it doesn't, what happened in March 2023, what the FDIC's announcements for all 15 bank failures since then show, and the options on the table. Every change to the limit since 1934 has been an Act of Congress, and changing it involves trade-offs.
The Free Terminal: Five Official Data Sources Behind the Headlines: In February 2026, an average of 78 ships a day crossed the Strait of Hormuz. In September, the average was 3.6. That is not a rumor or a headline: it is a free dataset from the International Monetary Fund. The video shows it and four other official, free sources behind market headlines (FRED, the U.S. Treasury, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the SEC's EDGAR), one chart from each, and where to find the data.
What's Inside Wall Street's 30% Profit Forecast: On Friday 2 October 2026, FactSet reported that Wall Street analysts expect S&P 500 profits to be 29.5% higher in the third quarter than a year earlier, more than double the ten-year average of 12.6%. Where the number comes from: two sectors that account for most of the expected extra profit, easy comparisons with 2025, about $150 billion of pre-tax income at two companies in the second quarter of 2026, mostly gains on investments, what it means for valuation, and the dates to watch in October.
Why 6 in 10 S&P 500 Stocks Fell While the Index Rose: The S&P 500 gained 2% in the third quarter of 2026, but the typical stock in it fell 4.4% and 62% of its members lost ground. Four stocks, Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple and Meta, added about four percentage points to the index's return; the rest of the index took away about two. Three forces that help explain the split, what the economy is saying, and the dates to watch before the Fed's next decision.
Big Tech's $217 Billion AI Bond Binge — What It Means for the Bond Market: Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Oracle sold at least $217 billion of bonds between January and 27 September 2026, twice as much as in all of 2025, to help pay for AI data centres and chips. Why some of the richest companies in the world are borrowing, what it's doing to the bond market, and the warning signs to watch.
Bond Yields Hit a 19-Year High. Why Aren't Stocks Falling?: The 10-year Treasury yield closed at 5.18% on 24 September, its highest close since July 2007, days after the Fed's first rate hike since 2023. Yet the S&P 500 closed that day about 1% below its record. The three forces behind the jump, and the dates that decide what happens next.
What a margin account is worth to its owner: the current value of the securities, plus any cash credit, minus the loan. It is the figure the maintenance requirement is tested against.
A company's own version of its profit, with items it chooses to leave out, such as one-time charges or the amortization of acquired intangibles, shown beside the GAAP figure. It is a non-GAAP measure, and there is no standard list of what is left out. When a company puts one in an earnings release, SEC rules require the most comparable GAAP figure with equal or greater prominence, and a reconciliation of the difference.
Buying and selling shares outside the regular U.S. exchange session, which runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time; the extra sessions can run before the open as well as after the close. Many companies release results before the open or after the close. The SEC's investor bulletin warns that trading then can have less liquidity, wider gaps between buying and selling prices, bigger price swings, and prices that may not match those in regular hours, such as at the next day's open.
A government order closing banks for a time. The one the term is remembered for began at 1 a.m. on Monday 6 March 1933, when President Roosevelt's proclamation suspended all banking transactions in the United States; banks reopened in stages from 13 March, after Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act.
Many depositors withdrawing their money from a bank at once because they fear it may fail. A bank lends for years but owes deposits on demand, so a run can force it to sell assets in a hurry or close; the fear can bring on the failure it anticipates. Deposit insurance is meant to reduce the reason to run, but only for money within the limit.
When a growth rate looks big or small because of the unusual figure it is compared with, not because of what is happening now. The earlier figure is the “base”: a very low one makes growth look large (an easy comparison), a very high one makes it look small.
A narrow sea passage on a widely used shipping route, such as the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal; the U.S. Energy Information Administration calls them critical to global energy security. IMF PortWatch tracks 28 of them, estimating from satellite signals how many cargo ships and tankers pass through each one every day.
Something a borrower pledges to secure a loan, which the lender can take or sell if the loan isn't repaid. In a margin account the securities themselves are the collateral: when they fall in value, so does the cover for the loan.
The average of forecasts made before a release: economists' forecasts for an economic report, or analysts' estimates of a company's earnings. Markets react to the surprise against it.
Growth worked out as if exchange rates had not changed since the year-earlier period, to set aside the effect of currency swings on a company that sells in other countries. The SEC's staff treats it as a non-GAAP measure, and says a company can meet the reconciliation rules by showing the historical amounts, the constant-currency amounts and how it calculated them. Some companies call the result “operational” growth.
How households feel about their finances and the economy, best known from the University of Michigan's monthly survey and its Index of Consumer Sentiment. A lower reading means more pessimism; it is watched as a guide to spending, though the two don't always move together.
How much one stock, or a group of stocks, added to or took from an index's return: its weight at the start of the period times its own return. While the members and their share counts don't change, the contributions add up exactly to the index's return.
A way for a program, not just a person, to ask a publisher for its data and get it back in a form a computer can read, such as a table or JSON; API stands for application programming interface. Public bodies such as the U.S. Treasury, the SEC and the IMF publish their statistics this way as well as on web pages.
The cash a customer owes the broker in a margin account: the margin loan. FINRA's margin-debt figure is the total of these balances across its member firms, counted gross: short credit balances and customers' free credit balances are not netted against it.
The FDIC's guarantee that money in deposit accounts at an insured bank is paid back if the bank fails, up to the standard limit of $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each ownership category. It covers checking, savings, money market deposit accounts and certificates of deposit; not stocks, bonds, mutual funds, annuities, Treasuries or crypto assets.
The fund the FDIC pays insured depositors from when a bank fails. It is built from assessments (insurance premiums) paid by insured banks and interest on the U.S. Treasury securities it holds, with no congressional appropriations, and it is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Its reserve ratio is the fund balance as a percentage of estimated insured deposits.
Earnings per share counted as if the securities that could turn into shares, such as stock options and convertible bonds, had done so. Basic EPS counts only the shares already issued and outstanding; diluted EPS adds the shares those securities would create, and by the accounting rules leaves out any that would push the figure up. Many earnings releases headline the diluted figure.
A share of a company's profit paid out to its shareholders; in the U.S., usually every quarter. Some investors own certain shares, such as utilities, mainly for this income, which has to compete with bond yields.
A conference call or webcast that many companies hold on the day they publish results, or soon after, in which executives talk through the period and take questions from analysts. Under Item 2.02 of Form 8-K, a company need not furnish a separate Form 8-K for what is said on it if SEC conditions are met: it first takes place within 48 hours after a related written release already furnished on Form 8-K, it was announced by a widely disseminated press release, anyone can join by dial-in or webcast, and the financial and other statistical information in it is on the company's website.
How much profit changed against the same period a year earlier. For an index such as the S&P 500, FactSet's published figures are consistent with adding up the dollar profits of all the companies and comparing that total with the total a year before, so the biggest profit pools count most.
The weeks after each quarter ends when most listed companies report their results. In the U.S. the big banks' reports are usually treated as the start of each season, around two weeks after the quarter ends, though some companies report earlier.
The gap between the earnings per share a company reports and the average of analysts' estimates of that figure. FactSet counts a positive EPS surprise when the actual figure is above the mean estimate: in its example, EPS of $1.10 against an estimate of $1.05 is a $0.05 upside surprise. It measures a result against expectations, not against the year before.
A version of an index in which every member counts the same, whatever its size; the S&P 500's equal-weighted version is rebalanced back to equal weights every quarter. Set against the standard index, it shows whether gains are broad or concentrated in the biggest names.
The extra return investors expect for owning stocks instead of safe government bonds. A simple gauge: the earnings yield minus the 10-year Treasury yield.
An exchange-traded fund: a fund that holds a basket of investments, usually shares or bonds, and trades on an exchange like a single share. Many track an index, a sector or a commodity, so their prices are used as a quick measure of a group.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the independent U.S. agency created by the Banking Act of 1933. It insures deposits at insured banks, supervises many of them and resolves the ones that fail; it is funded by the banks' assessments and the interest on its Treasury holdings, not by congressional appropriations.
What the U.S. government owes on all its Treasury securities, which the Treasury reports to the cent every business day in its Debt to the Penny dataset. Debt held by the public is owed to holders outside the federal government, from individuals and companies to the Federal Reserve Banks and foreign governments; intragovernmental holdings are owed to government funds such as the Social Security trust funds. The Treasury uses “national debt”, “federal debt” and “public debt” interchangeably.
A company's own accounting year, which need not match the calendar year: the IRS defines it as 12 consecutive months ending on the last day of any month except December, or a 52–53-week year that ends on the same weekday each year. Micron's runs to the Thursday closest to 31 August, so its fiscal 2026 had 53 weeks and fiscal 2025 had 52.
A U.S. public company's annual report, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission: its audited financial statements, with the company's own description of its business, its risks and the year's results. Quarterly reports go on Form 10-Q and events such as results announcements on Form 8-K; all of them are free on the SEC's EDGAR system.
A U.S. public company's quarterly report to the SEC, filed for each of the first three quarters of its fiscal year; the fourth quarter is covered by the annual report, Form 10-K. It holds the quarter's financial statements, which may be unaudited but must be reviewed by an independent accountant, management's discussion of the results, and a table of the company's share buybacks. It is due 40 days after the quarter ends for larger companies (large accelerated and accelerated filers) and 45 days for the rest. Many companies publish a results release first and file the 10-Q later.
The SEC's “current report”: the filing a U.S. public company makes when something important happens, generally within four business days. A company announcing quarterly or annual results furnishes its results press release, usually as Exhibit 99.1, under Item 2.02, “Results of Operations and Financial Condition”. Information furnished under that item is treated as furnished, not filed, unless the company says otherwise. Form 8-Ks are free to read on the SEC's EDGAR system.
The price of a share or an index divided by the profit analysts expect over the next 12 months, rather than the profit already reported. FactSet's S&P 500 figure uses the index's price and analysts' estimates of its earnings for the coming 12 months.
Typically a company's cash from operating activities minus its capital spending, though each company defines it for itself. It is a non-GAAP measure. The SEC's staff says a company should explain how it works the figure out, and should not suggest it is cash left over to spend freely, since debt payments and other commitments are not deducted.
Generally accepted accounting principles: the accounting rules U.S. public companies follow in the financial statements they file with the SEC. They are set by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), whose standards the SEC recognizes as “generally accepted”. A figure worked out under them is a GAAP, or reported, figure. A measure that adjusts one, by leaving out a charge for example, is non-GAAP.
A bond rated below investment grade (BB+ or lower on S&P's scale), also called a junk bond. It pays a wider spread over Treasuries than investment-grade bonds, for a higher risk of default.
A broker's own margin rule, set above the regulatory minimum: a maintenance requirement of 30% or 40% instead of FINRA's 25%, for example. Brokers can raise house requirements at any time, without advance written notice.
The financial statement that shows how much revenue a company earned over a period, such as a quarter, the costs taken off along the way, and what is left at the “bottom line”: net income, followed by earnings per share. The SEC's beginners' guide likens it to a set of stairs, from sales at the top down to the bottom line. It is sometimes called a profit and loss statement, and some companies call it a statement of earnings.
Using borrowed money to hold more than your own money would buy. It magnifies gains and losses alike: $20,000 of stock bought with $10,000 of your own money doubles the effect of every move on your money, before interest.
The minimum equity a margin account must keep after a purchase, as a share of the securities' current value. FINRA's rule sets it at 25% of the market value of the margin stocks held in the account; many brokers require more.
A brokerage account in which the broker can lend you cash against the securities in it, so you can buy more than you pay for in full. The securities are the collateral for the loan, and the broker charges interest on it.
A broker's demand for more cash or securities when a margin account's equity falls below the required level. The customer can add cash or securities, or sell; the broker can also sell securities in the account, and isn't required to call first or to let the customer choose what is sold.
The total that customers owe their brokers in margin accounts: loans secured by the securities in those accounts. In the U.S., FINRA adds up its member firms' month-end debit balances and publishes the total every month, in a table that starts in 1997.
How many of an index's members are taking part in a move. If an index rises while most of its stocks fall, breadth is narrow: a few big names are doing the work.
How the S&P 500 and most big indexes are built: each company counts in proportion to its market value (counting only the shares available to investors). The biggest companies move the index most.
The member in the middle when every stock in an index is ranked by its return: half did better, half worse (with an even number of members, the average of the two middle returns). It shows what the typical stock did, which an index weighted by size can hide.
What is left of a company's revenue after every cost, interest and income tax has been taken off: the “bottom line” of the income statement. It is also called net earnings or net profit, and it is a net loss when it is negative. Divided by the number of shares, it gives earnings per share.
A gain or a charge that a company does not expect to repeat every quarter, such as a tax charge, a write-down or an unusually large change in the value of an investment. It can swing reported profit a lot while saying little about what the underlying business earns.
Profit from running the business itself: revenue minus the costs of making and selling the products and of running the company, before interest and income tax. The SEC's beginners' guide calls it “income from operations”. Interest and income tax are taken off after it, so it can differ a lot from net income.
Operating income divided by revenue, as a percentage: how much operating profit a company keeps from each dollar of sales. The SEC's beginners' guide gives the formula as income from operations divided by net revenues. For example, $20 of operating income on $100 of revenue is a 20% operating margin.
How a deposit is held: in one person's name, jointly, in a retirement account such as an IRA, in a trust, in an employee benefit plan, by a corporation, partnership or association, or by a government body. All of a depositor's money in one category at one bank is added together and insured up to $250,000 (for a trust, $250,000 for each beneficiary up to five; for an employee benefit plan, for each participant), and each category is insured separately, so one person can be insured for more than $250,000 at one bank.
Purchasing managers' index: a monthly survey of companies. Above 50 means activity is growing, below 50 that it's shrinking. The flash PMI is an early estimate.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' measure of the average change over time in the selling prices U.S. producers receive for their output. It looks at prices from the seller's side, where the CPI looks from the buyer's side; the two can differ because of taxes, subsidies and distribution costs. Published monthly.
What happens to a failed bank: its chartering authority closes it and appoints the FDIC as receiver to take over its assets and liabilities. Usually the FDIC sells the deposits to a healthy bank, so the failed bank's depositors become depositors of the buyer; otherwise it pays insured deposits directly. Deposits above the limit that no buyer takes become claims on the bank's assets, paid as they are sold.
The Federal Reserve Board's rule on the credit brokers may extend for buying securities. For most stocks it sets the initial margin at 50% of the purchase price, so a broker may lend up to half; brokers can ask for more.
The money a company brings in from selling its products and services in a period, before the costs of making and selling them are taken off. It sits at the top of the income statement, so it is called the “top line”, and many companies call it sales. Its growth is often quoted against the same period a year earlier.
A change to a figure already published or forecast: an update to economic data as more complete information comes in, or an analyst raising or cutting an earnings estimate.
An index of about 2,000 smaller U.S. companies, the usual benchmark for small caps. It is set against the S&P 500 to see whether small or large companies are leading.
A statistical step that removes regular calendar patterns, such as holiday sales or winter heating, so that one month can be compared with the next. The BLS publishes the CPI both ways: its month-to-month changes are seasonally adjusted, and those indexes can be revised for up to five years, while its 12-month inflation rate is computed from the not seasonally adjusted index, series CUUR0000SA0, which the BLS says is final when issued.
One of the 11 broad groups (GICS sectors) that S&P 500 companies are sorted into by their main business, such as energy, technology or utilities. Sector moves are often tracked with funds that hold each group, such as the Select Sector SPDRs.
A part of a company that it reports on separately because senior management reviews that part's results on their own, to decide where to put resources and to judge performance: a drugs business and a medical-devices business, say. Companies reconcile the segments' figures to their company-wide totals.
The short code a data publisher gives each data series, such as DGS10 for the 10-year Treasury yield at FRED or CUUR0000SA0 for the headline CPI at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The ID names the series wherever it is published; in a BLS code, each part says what the series is.
When a company spends its own cash to buy its shares back from the market, also called a share repurchase. With fewer shares outstanding, earnings per share can rise even if profit does not. A company lists its repurchases for the quarter in its Form 10-Q, month by month: shares bought, the average price paid, and how many shares, or how many dollars' worth, it may still buy under its announced plan. SEC Rule 10b-18 gives a safe harbor from market-manipulation liability to open-market buybacks that meet its conditions; following it is voluntary.
Since a 1991 law the FDIC must resolve a failed bank in the way that costs its fund the least, and it may not protect uninsured deposits in a way that adds to the fund's losses. The exception lets the Treasury Secretary, on the recommendation of the FDIC's and the Federal Reserve's boards and after consulting the President, set those rules aside when the failure would seriously harm the economy or financial stability. It was used for Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank on 12 March 2023; any losses to the fund from protecting uninsured depositors are recovered by a special assessment on banks.
How the U.S. Treasury sells new bills, notes and bonds. Bidders say how much they want and, in a competitive bid, the yield they will accept; bids are accepted from the lowest yield up until the amount is sold, and every successful bidder gets the highest accepted yield, the “high yield”. The bid-to-cover ratio is the amount bid divided by the amount awarded.
A depositor's money at one bank above the insurance limit for its ownership category. The FDIC estimates the total for the banking system every quarter, from bank reports and its own calculation. If a bank fails and no buyer takes them on, uninsured deposits become claims on the failed bank's assets rather than a guaranteed payment.
A rise in the value of something a company or investor still holds, such as shares in another company, that has not been sold. Under U.S. accounting rules (GAAP), a minority stake that a company doesn't control or significantly influence is generally revalued through profit: listed shares at their market price, unlisted ones often only when a new price is seen, such as a funding round. No cash comes in until the shares are sold.
A line joining the yields of bonds from 1 month to 30 years on the same day. Its slope shows how rates change with time.
For educational purposes only. Not investment advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Every figure on these pages carries its source.