Thursday, March 12, 2015

"Big Banks Announce Plans To Return More Cash To Shareholders" (XLF)

The XLF is the ETF for the financial stocks in the S&P 500. $24.34 up $0.37 (1.54%)
This is one of the reasons we can drone on about stocks still being in a bull market* even as the strong dollar hammers exporters and crushes energy stocks.
Yay stress tests.
From Forbes:
Wednesday the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors announced its approval of capital plans from 28 of the 31 financial institutions it forces to undergo the annual Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review. 

Of the big U.S. banks Citigroup, Wells Fargo,  JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley all received approval, although the latter three had to modify their plans during the review process in order to pass. Bank of America received conditional approval. The Fed told the Charlotte, N.C. based bank that is must resubmit its plan by the end of September, if that new plan is not satisfactory the Fed may restrict Bank of America’s dividend and repurchase plans. The U.S. divisions of Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Spain’s Banco Santander failed the test. 

“Our capital plan review helps ensure that the capital distribution plans of large banks will not compromise their ability to continue lending to businesses and households even during a period of serious financial stress,” said Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo, who oversees the central bank’s regulatory functions, in a statement. “It also provides a structured assessment of their risk management capacities.”...MORE
*Most recently in last Saturday's "Dollar index hits 11-year high on strong jobs report":
Well, oil and the buck have now switched places as to which is the driver, but either way we continue to call for a bull in the larger market, an even stronger dollar and another leg down in oil and oil equities. 
That's about as plain-speak as you are liable to get from an analyst.
We've been on this kick for a while now, here are some links from a January post.

Finally, from FinViz, a break above the downsloping channel line would be nice: