Every time I turn on CNBC, FBN, or the like, I hear a pundit or analyst pounding the table to "buy the banks." The go on to ramble a spiel about low valuation rations (P/B, P/E, P/FCF, etc), rising rate environments, yield curve inversions, and other reasons that they should outperform the markets going forward. But who's biting?
A quick glance at the SPDR financial ETF - XLF - and you will likely arrive at the conclusion that this is a sell, not a buy. We've broken short term trends (red dotted lines), intermediate term trend (orange dotted line) from 2016 lows, and are approaching a trend line (green dotted line) from the recession lows nearly a decade ago. Even worse, it looks to have formed a double top at the $30 level, the first peak coming in 2007.
Until there's a bid to reverse trend, this is a hard sell. Support looks to come in around $25. If that fails, the next support is around $21, but that's crash-level support.
Of course, one must ponder... if the banks are rolling over, how well can the broader markets hold up? Is this the warning shots of a larger correction in the markets? Hmm...
A quick glance at the SPDR financial ETF - XLF - and you will likely arrive at the conclusion that this is a sell, not a buy. We've broken short term trends (red dotted lines), intermediate term trend (orange dotted line) from 2016 lows, and are approaching a trend line (green dotted line) from the recession lows nearly a decade ago. Even worse, it looks to have formed a double top at the $30 level, the first peak coming in 2007.
Until there's a bid to reverse trend, this is a hard sell. Support looks to come in around $25. If that fails, the next support is around $21, but that's crash-level support.
Of course, one must ponder... if the banks are rolling over, how well can the broader markets hold up? Is this the warning shots of a larger correction in the markets? Hmm...