A follow up from previous post. Bank stocks as short candidates: Commerzbank (CBK) (capital required by EBA) SocGen (GLE) (capital required by EBA) RBS (RBS) (chart weakness compared to other banks) Lloyds (LLOY) (chart weakness compared to other banks) Santander (SAN) (chart weakness compared to other banks) Popolare (BP) (capital required by EBA) BMPS (BMPS) (capital required by EBA) Ubi Banca (UBI) (capital required by EBA) Unicredit (UCG) (capital required by EBA) maybe Intesa (ISP) (no capital required by EBA)
Earlier post from the SocGen thread: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3344823#post3344823 Noticeable differentiation between European banks: SocGen down 16%, up 3% from low of day Credit Agricole down 10%, up 4% from low of day BNP Paribas down 12%, up 2% from low of day Commerzbank down 8%, up 3% from low Deutsche down "only" 6%, up 6% from low of day, the strongest of this group of five. ** edited to add: Tuesday 4 October was a multi-week bottom for both financials and equities in general. However during today's session, both SocGen and Commerzbank broke below the intraday lows they reached on 4 October. These are the two to watch. Both were asked to raise substantial amounts of capital relative to their market caps. Both have significant exposure to Greece. The capital required : market cap is higher for Commerzbank, however SocGen is the much weaker stock today. Having said that, Commerzbank is only about 10% from its 52-week low, whereas SocGen is more than 15% above its 52-week low.
LLOY (London) LYG (New York) www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/02/lloyds-idUSWLA824420111102 "Lloyds CEO to step back on health grounds - source" As mentioned earlier in this thread, RBS and LYG are the two UK banks on my watchlist as short candidates. They have noticeably underperformed BCS and HBC in recent months. Also I found an interesting thread here: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=212092&highlight=lloyds regarding refinancing needs for RBS and LYG. Both banks are about 10% from their 52-week lows, which is not that much given the massive rally in bank shares for most of October.
Update: www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/18/bpm-idUSL5E7MI46F20111118 "B P di Milano rights issue falls short of target" snippet: "Shares of BPM lost another 7 percent on Friday falling to 0.28 euros, below the share offering's price of 0.3 euros at which the shares left unsubscribed by shareholders and holders of a convertible bond will now be offered to other investors." "The capital increase is guaranteed by Barclays , BNP Paribas , Mediobanca , Nomura , Banco Santander , Societe Generale , and Royal Bank of Scotland , as joint bookrunners, and by ING Bank , as co-bookrunner." *** So we have a big bunch of insolvent banks underwriting a capital raising of an insolvent Italian bank .... makes sense to me.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/commerzbank-monkeyhammered-insolvency-concerns "Commerzbank Monkeyhammered On Insolvency Concerns" Also http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/22/commerzbank-capital-idUSWEB527520111122 "Commerzbank may need 5 bln eur for EBA -sources"
More stress tests http://federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/20111122a.htm king from the firms and the analysis the Federal Reserve will do for the CCAR in 2012. There are two sets of instructions: one for the 19 firms that participated in the CCAR in 2011, the other for 12 additional firms with at least $50 billion in assets that have not previously participated in a supervisory stress test exercise. The level of detail and analysis expected in each institution's capital plan will vary based on the company's size, complexity, risk profile, and scope of operations. The 19 banks tested previously: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervisory_Capital_Assessment_Program#Banks_tested As for the identity of the other 11 banks, here is a list of banks by assets held: http://www.bankregdata.com/allAQtxr.asp?met=TXR My guess is that it will be the likes of DFS, SCHW, CMA, HBAN, HCBK, ZION, ETFC, NYB, BPOP, FNFG and SNV. Of these, ZION, SNV and BPOP are interesting because they still have not repaid TARP capital. RF has also not repaid TARP capital, and it is included in the top 19.
According to page 3 of "Instructions for Other Firms" http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/bcreg20111122e1.pdf the other 12 banks are BBVA USA Bancshares Inc., BMO Financial Corp., Citizens Financial Group Inc., Comerica Inc., Discover Financial Services, HSBC North America Holdings Inc., Huntington Bancshares Inc., M&T Bank Corp., Northern Trust Corp., RBC USA Holdco Corp., UnionBanCal Corp., and Zions Bancorporation. BBVA (subsidiary of much larger Spanish bank) BMO (subsidiary of much larger Canadian bank) Citizens Financial (subsidiary of RBS) CMA DFS HBC (subsidiary of much larger bank) HBAN MTB NTRS RBC (subsidiary of much larger Canadian bank) UnionBanCal (subsidiary of Mitsubishi UFJ which is NYSE: MTU) ZION
Seems that the Fed might be a bit late. XLF is down a lot from the highs, some of these banks will have a hard time raising capital and there is no backstop from TARP now. Large capital needs might take down the bank
Tough luck. Whether they like it or not, capital raises are coming. A lot of the selling in financials was surely do to frontrunning this sort of scenario.
m22au, I have some questions about your strategy of shorting very low priced stocks down to $0 -Have you have experiences of stocks doubling or tripling before going bust?What do you do when the stock goes significantly against you -Do you use stops in these positions? -These stocks seem to trade like options(Hence they go down a bit everyday like an OTM option getting close to expiration), so the trade seems to be a short gamma trade, aren't you afraid of a large loss that would eat up all the accumulated profits? -Why you believe there is a risk premium in those situations?I understand that people sometimes will keep their hopes for too long but at the same time the stocks trade like options, people don't have to be right even close to 50% to be correct in buying the shares, why you believe these "options" are mispriced and there is a risk premium to be earned? -Why the historical risk premium of 10% in stocks would not apply to these shares?