having worked for a bank, I will tell you a lower fed funds rate is not a benefit. A lowering of the rate is usually too late to respond to an overall downtrend in the economy. How many times have we seen one move? Its starts with one and then we have 5 or 6. A downtrend that started by aggressive lenders extending to much money to companies that couldn't foot the bill. They then slash employment to cut costs (too try and make interest payments on said loans), which cuts the disposable income of middle of America to buy product, which leads to more cuts and slashes and an eventual bottom but it never comes with one cut. buying into the first (of many) fed cuts. stupid. selling into a fed raise (of hopefully a few). even dumber. If those educated, never worked a real job, mf'ing "economists", see the economy is on the rise, then you sure as shit should.
On Wednesday the banking sector rose 10.88%, on Thursday 5.75% and of Friday 1.41%. I'm not including real estate/mortgage stocks in this sector, or "space" as I guess it is now called, so Freddie and Fannie had no effect on those rises. I looked at the SEC order and there are only 19 stocks in it, but it looks like shorts in all banks are being covered as if traders expect the SEC may expand their regulation. However, if the SEC doesn't expand, we can clearly see the rise is losing momentum. I doubt if anyone is ready to step up and buy bank stocks right now, so I expect the downtrend to resume.
Does anyone know of an ETF fund that replicates the european banking index, or something similar? (like how the KBE replicates the US Banking Index). cheers