High Hours Are Not the Risk. Bad Records Are.
Most underwriting reads utilization as wear and charter as diluted control. Both readings are backwards, and they are excluding good aircraft from good buyers. There is a reflex in aircraft lending that has calcified into something close to doctrine: hours are bad. The more an airframe has flown, the more cautious the file becomes. Charter […]
The Residual Is Not a Question About Your Credit
Two identical aircraft, two identical borrowers, wildly different payments. The variable is the lessor — and almost nobody asks about it. An owner evaluating an operating lease against a loan will typically approach it as a question about themselves. What is my tax position? How long do I intend to hold? What does my balance […]
98 Days on Market Means the Good Aircraft Never Reached the Market
Rising time-to-sale reads like a cooling market. It is describing the opposite, and the distinction determines whether you are a bidder or a spectator. Average time on market for preowned business aircraft reached 98 days on a trailing-twelve-month basis this spring, up more than 11 percent year over year. Read in isolation, that is a […]
The Most Rigorous Price Forecast in Energy Had a Three-Week Shelf Life, New Research Says Operators Should Stop Building Capital Plans That Require One
IRVINE, Calif. — August 12, 2026 — First National Capital Corporation, a leading independent provider of capital equipment and project financing, today released The Three-Week Window, a midyear research report examining how U.S. oil and gas operators deployed capital during a first half in which crude prices moved more than $45 in four months. The […]
Gas Does Not Care About Hormuz
While crude traversed a $45 range twice, the natural gas story barely moved. That is not a coincidence — and it is the closest thing to a planning assumption available in energy right now. Everything about energy in 2026 has been narrated through the Persian Gulf. Crude above $110 in March. Mid-$60s in early July. […]
Your Borrowing Base Is Engineered to Fail You at the Exact Wrong Moment
Redetermination against a price deck is not a flaw in reserve-based lending. It is the design. The problem is what operators are funding with it. Every upstream operator understands how a borrowing base works. Reserves are engineered, a price deck is applied, advance rates are set, and availability is established. Twice a year, usually, the […]
The Most Rigorous Forecast in Energy Had a Three-Week Shelf Life
If the EIA cannot hold a price call for a month, no operator should be running a capital plan that requires one to be right. On July 7, the Energy Information Administration published its Short-Term Energy Outlook. The forecast had been completed six days earlier, on July 1. It cut the 2026 Brent projection to […]
New Research Finds U.S. Manufacturing Capital Investment Outran Every 2026 Forecast — While the Manufacturers Who Waited for Clarity Paid the Higher Price
First National Capital Corporation’s mid-year analysis finds machine tool order values up nearly 32 percent against forecasts calling for flat to declining activity, and identifies underwriting capability — not credit availability — as the constraint on middle-market execution IRVINE, Calif. — August 5th, 2026 — First National Capital Corporation, one of the largest independent providers […]
Nobody Is Coming to Hire For You
Manufacturing has spent four years treating the labor shortage as a cycle to wait out. The data has been saying something different for a while now. There is a comfortable story about manufacturing labor that has been told at conferences since roughly 2021. It goes like this: the shortage is a hangover from the pandemic, […]
You Have Waited Ten Months for a Number That Would Not Have Changed Your Decision
The Section 232 determination on robotics is overdue. Run the automation math at every plausible tariff rate and the answer barely moves. On September 2, 2025, the Commerce Department opened a Section 232 national security investigation into imports of robotics and industrial machinery. The scope was drawn broadly: CNC machining centers, turning and milling machines, […]