Fed frees the financials to raise dividends and buy back shares. Stocks go up…..and then give most of it up. And today, when the entire market gapped up, banks were right in there……for a while.
Today’s Barron’s Online column was entitled Banks Pass Tests but Stocks Stay Stressed . Apparently, the market did not care too much, except for a knee jerk open Friday and Monday, for the news. Check this chart of Citi, which announced its first (trivial) dividend in a long time and a reverse split.
They jumped for the one cent dividend and then realized something was wrong. That is a rather massive bearish outside-day reversal. Pick a bank and odds are it has a crappy chart like this.
