This past Sunday night I took a quick look below at the bank stocks and suggested that when I was ready, (I explicitly stated that I wasn’t yet) that I would express Bullish views in these stocks through a strategy called a risk reversal……in its bullish form you would sell a put and use the proceeds to buy a call, thus creating long exposure and a band in which you would be put the stock on the downside and have the right to exercise the call on the upside. I suggested I would probably do this at some point this summer when I felt the stocks (namely JPM and BAC) were washed out in a fairly panicked fashion.
Well, some large investor(s) with much deeper pockets than little ol’ me beat me to it……3 large risk reversals in BAC, WFC and JPM got a lot of attention in the options pits today…..
1) BAC sold aug 9 put to buy Aug 11/ 14 call spread 25,000, paid .30
2) WFC sold oct 24 put to buy oct 28 call 32, 000x, collected .04 vs selling about 1.5million shares at 26.20
3) JPM, sold aug 38 put to buy Aug 43 call 20,000x, paid .08 vs selling 1million shares at 41.07
All 3 were very bullish trades, and while the capital outlay was lessened by the put sale, they all come with some considerable risks if the stocks have another leg down this summer as the put that the investors are short have the ability to hurt them from a directional standpoint (even-though in the case of WFC and JPM they were delta neutral) but also from a vol standpoint.
These trades may also signal to some that the big boys think that the stocks are too oversold and that some are calling for the bottom, especially on a day that saw the market rally for the first day in a week lead by the strength in the beleaguered financial sector. We will have to wait and see but I would guess that these trades are mildly premature and that all of the stocks listed above will make new lows in the coming weeks…..this will be a sector that many see the opportunity to get the most bang for their buck due to their massive under-performance and there will likely be a few false starts to the rally…..but when they rally they may overshoot on the upside as they did on the downside…..
MS’s chart below is interesting to me, the stock is down 30% from its mid February high and you could probably count the amount of up days the stock has had in the last 2 months on one hand…..what’s interesting about MS is that they don’t have nearly the amount of problems with mortgages than the large money center banks, yet the stock has acted a bit worse on a relative basis…..
[caption id="attachment_2533" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="1 Yr MS chart Provided by Bloomberg"]
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If you were inclined to play MS for a bounce into the Fall I would put on a risk reversal rather than buying the stock…… (I am not doing this yet, would prefer when the stock is below 20, so this is an example or if you were going to buy the stock here).
TRADE EXAMPLE: MS ($22.51) OCT 20 /25 Risk Reversal for a .04 credit
-Sell the Oct 20 Put (25 delta option) at .72 and
-Buy the Oct 25 Call for .68
Get on for a .04 credit.
Break-Even on Oct Expiration:
Neutral: btwn 20 and 25 take in a .04 credit…
Downside: put the stock at 20 (down 11%) less the .04 credit.
Upside: above 25 (up 11%) you are long plus the .04 credit.
-Mark to market you will experience gains and losses as the stock moves closer to the put strike you are short or the call strike you are long.
Original Post June 5th, 2011 10;15pm: Bank Stocks Not Out of the Woods Yet- So Says NYT
Article below in today’s New York Times Business Section reinforces a lot of the reasons why I am short JPM, and have been GS and will remain short the sector until they get washed out in a dramatic fashion. Followers of Quick Hits on the site know that I follow the sometime success but mostly repeated failure of this sector intra-day because I am of the belief that the market will be unable to make new highs and a sustainable rally until this sector is healthier and ready to participate to the upside…..I am waiting to see a bottoming phase, but it appears this will likely come following a panic sell-off instead of a gradual reversal.
-I guess the most important take away from this (and I am glad that investors weren’t fooled by this when the banks reported Q1 reports in April) is the excerpt from the article on why the sector got nailed after what appeared to be headline beats in the qtr:
In the first quarter of 2011, the top 20 banks earned $27.5 billion in pretax income. Nearly $11 billion, or 40 percent of that, came from the release of reserves……The proportion was even higher in the fourth quarter of 2010, when it hit 54 percent. While that money has helped camouflage anemic revenue and lackluster loan growth, it is hardly a long-term strategy for sustainable profit increases.
-Article also suggests that Paulson, who amassed massive positions in BAC and C at the bottom, back in the 1st half of 2009, has been scaling out of these names…..the guy and his firm are obviously very talented, and he doesn’t look like the type to twice round trip Citi without selling a share like some less talented long time holders……But please, please, someone let me know when Paulson’s sell order is getting cleaned up, this one may be better than when the Govt sold the last shares owned under TARP.
-I will want to take a shot on this sector from the long side at some point, there will be a great short term trade playing for a short squeeze off of the bottom and then there will be a longer term one year trade where they will be too cheap and discounting some worst case scenarios…..I am likely to express this view through options in risk reversals…..
Quick example if you were looking to Buy here for a bounce (which I DO NOT ENDORSE)….but I would look to a stronger better positioned name like JPM to express this view…..I would look to the Fall and identify a level where you think there is some good technical support, in this case $36 seems like the level…..
Now again to be clear, my target on the downside is probably $36-37 so I am no advocating this trade now, but if you were inclined to buy the stock here then I would much rather sell the Sept 37 put at .86 and Buy the Sept 44 Call for 1.10…..Break-even on Sept expiration: upside 44.24 and downside 37.24….
-On the flip side, while JPM seems like a safe bet, you may get more bang for your buck if a name like BAC were trading for a level that would serve as a fairly large hat size…..at that point I would consider selling 8 Puts and Buying 12 calls, maybe even looking to do with some fairly longer dated options like Feb 2012….(again, I would want to do this if the stock got washed out below 10.00 this summer but most likely 9ish….)
Great Read If this sector interests you:
June 5, 2011
Bank Shares Take a Beating, and It May Not Be Over Yet
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZMichael Scanlon is tempted by bank stocks, truly he is.
They are cheap — selling at near their lows for the year, and trading at well below the valuation of other large companies. But Mr. Scanlon, who helps oversee $7.5 billion for the John Hancock family of mutual funds in Boston and specializes in financial companies, is not about to give in and buy more shares.
“It’s just not going to be a smooth ride,” he said. “You wake up every day and there’s a new headline and a new concern.”
Bank stocks took another tumble late last week after Moody’s, the credit rating firm, warned it might downgrade the debt of giants like Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo as the government eases back on support for the sector. Even as the market absorbed that news, reports that Goldman Sachs had been subpoenaed in an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney further unnerved investors, and sent that giant investment’s bank’s shares sinking.
Pessimism about the sector was reinforced by weaker-than-expected economic data, including a bleak reading on unemployment on Friday.
What’s more, well-known hedge fund investors like John A. Paulson and David Tepper have been quietly selling the big positions in the sector they had earlier amassed, a sign the smart money has already begun to bail.
Mr. Tepper, in particular, had made huge profits by scooping up beaten-down bank stocks when they bottomed out in late 2008 and early 2009 in the midst of the financial crisis and riding their subsequent recovery. But in the first quarter of 2011, he sold off about a third of his positions in Citigroup and Bank of America.
For Mr. Tepper, the timing was impeccable. Since the beginning of April, the KBW Bank Index has dropped 8 percent, compared with a much more modest 2 percent decline in the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. Last week, bank stocks sank to their lowest point since early December.
For individual investors, who have long favored bank stocks as a source of dividends and at least the promise of stability, their recent performance has been a big disappointment. And few experts expect a turnaround anytime soon.
“I haven’t seen investor sentiment this bad in a long time,” said Jason Goldberg, a longtime bank stock analyst at Barclays. “Not owning the group has been the right call, and people are skeptical about getting back in.”
By many measures, the sector is pretty cheap. Diversified banks are trading at about 9.4 times earnings, compared with a multiple of 12.4 for the broader S.& P. 500, according to FactSet Research.
But then, they may deserve to be selling at a discount. Besides the worries about a possible debt downgrade and the investigations into the role they played in the financial crisis, major banks are facing headwinds on many fronts.
For starters, federal regulations passed last year are set to cut deeply into revenue on everything from debit card transactions to trading on Wall Street.
The restriction on debit card fees, known as the Durbin Amendment after the senator who proposed it, Dick Durbin of Illinois, could alone cost the top 25 banks roughly $8 billion in lost revenue, Mr. Goldberg said.
The new regulations are set to go into effect on July 21, although Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, is pushing a proposal on Capitol Hill that could come up for a vote as early as next week that would delay their start by 15 months.
Even if Mr. Tester wins a reprieve for the banks, other rules in the broader Dodd-Frank bill, which overhauled financial regulations, could cost the industry another $8 billion, according to Mr. Goldberg.
In addition, new international rules now being developed to require major institutions to hold more capital as a buffer against future financial crises will also erode profitability. That is because money set aside as ballast is cash that will not be available to lend out or pay dividends or buy back stock.
More than any of the changes hurtling toward them is a more fundamental problem that banks face — revenue is stuck in neutral. And a huge chunk of profits is not coming from the actual business of lending money, but instead represents gains from the release of reserves set aside in the past for possible loan losses. As these costs have eased, that money for a rainy day has fallen to the bottom line.
In the first quarter of 2011, the top 20 banks earned $27.5 billion in pretax income. Nearly $11 billion, or 40 percent of that, came from the release of reserves, according to Mr. Goldberg. The proportion was even higher in the fourth quarter of 2010, when it hit 54 percent.
While that money has helped camouflage anemic revenue and lackluster loan growth, it is hardly a long-term strategy for sustainable profit increases.
Then there are the legal headaches. The biggest banks face another threat from an investigation into mortgage servicing abuses by all 50 state attorneys general, who are pressing for a settlement of $20 billion or more. The banks themselves are holding out for a much more modest payment of $5 billion, and though the momentum has shifted in favor of the banks lately, the uncertainty about how big the inevitable hit will be has further undermined shares.
Even if the banks are able to avoid a giant settlement, a potentially more expensive headache is the effort by private investors to force them to buy back soured mortgage securities. The industry has already set aside billions for these claims, known as “put-backs,” but tens of billions in potential losses still loom.
As badly as the broader sector has performed, some banks have held up better than others. Bank of America has been among the worst performers, falling 15 percent since the beginning of April to close at $11.28 Friday, hurt by a lackluster first quarter and persistent worries that its huge portfolio of troubled mortgages will sap earnings for years to come.
Similarly, Wells Fargo has declined 15 percent to $26.86, another victim of mortgage-related worries, as well as its dependence on the United States economy for the vast bulk of its business.
Citigroup, which has more exposure to faster-growing international markets, has fallen 10 percent to $39.85 over the same period, although results in its investment-banking business were weak in the first quarter. It also resorted to a 1-for-10 reverse stock split to lift its share price out of the single digits, a move usually reserved for penny stocks and other shaky investments.
JPMorgan, at $41.57 a share, is also off 10 percent, although analysts say its underlying earnings power is much stronger than that of Bank of America or Citigroup, and it has been using extra capital to buy back stock and raise its dividend. In fact, the Federal Reserve vetoed Bank of America’s plan to increase its dividend in March, even as it permitted rivals like JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and others to raise theirs.
Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, ended the week at $135.33, not far from its 52-week low of $129.50.
“It’s hard to look past what’s going on right now,” said Mr. Scanlon, the John Hancock analyst. “Who knows what I’m going to read tomorrow?”