diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 0b0d8b13..5500b86e 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,5 +1,11 @@
 # Items for next release go here
 
+* Speed improvement from simplifying the normalization when fitting the 
+generalized Pareto distribution. (#187, @sethaxen)
+
+* Fixed bug where attribute storing normalizing constant of PSIS weights wasn't
+updated when using moment matching. (#167, @fweber144)
+
 * Switch unit tests from Travis to GitHub Actions. (#164)
 
 ### Bug fixes 
diff --git a/R/gpdfit.R b/R/gpdfit.R
index 09025565..7cd46ea3 100644
--- a/R/gpdfit.R
+++ b/R/gpdfit.R
@@ -40,9 +40,7 @@ gpdfit <- function(x, wip = TRUE, min_grid_pts = 30, sort_x = TRUE) {
   xstar <- x[floor(N / 4 + 0.5)] # first quartile of sample
   theta <- 1 / x[N] + (1 - sqrt(M / (jj - 0.5))) / prior / xstar
   l_theta <- N * lx(theta, x) # profile log-lik
-  w_theta <- 1 / vapply(jj, FUN.VALUE = numeric(1), FUN = function(j) {
-    sum(exp(l_theta - l_theta[j]))
-  })
+  w_theta <- exp(l_theta - matrixStats::logSumExp(l_theta)) # normalize
   theta_hat <- sum(theta * w_theta)
   k <- mean.default(log1p(-theta_hat * x))
   sigma <- -k / theta_hat