Ten years on from the financial crisis, bank balance sheets haven’t become any simpler to digest for the average investor. Finance firms are big and leveraged; regulations have just become new instruments of complexity. That might suggest a potential windfall for any brainy number-cruncher who’s bored enough to spend a year looking for inconsistencies in the industry’s accounts. London hedge ...

Elon Musk fired a bazooka in his war against Tesla Inc.’s equity market short-sellers when he announced he’s considering taking the company private. His plan would also most likely wipe out investors who bet the money-losing automaker would eventually default on its bonds. The cost to insure against Tesla failing to make good on its debt fell to an all-time ...

Japan may be just posing as an outlier. Yes, the Bank of Japan renewed its commitment to ultra-low interest rates just as other developed economies were moving towards further rate increases and an end to stimulus. But beneath the headlines about the BOJ’s pledge to keep printing money for an “extended period,” Governor Haruhiko Kuroda and his colleagues left clues ...