But U.S. bank indices have outperformed the wider market by more than 25 percentage points since Pfizer and BioNTech announced on November 9 that their COVID-19 vaccine had proven highly effective.
The banks are going from the land of misfit toys, where they were in the summer, to being an area of interest for investorsOn Wednesday, after the Georgia results came in, U.S. bank shares rose by almost 7 per cent, their biggest daily gain since November. TheThe coronavirus crisis made a run of poor performance much worse. The KBW bank index lost a quarter of its value from late 2018 to late 2020, underperforming the S&P 500 by almost 50 percentage points.
Since November Wells Fargo has received five upgrades from Wall Street analysts, and the shares have rallied almost 40 per cent.Rallies are visible outside the U.S., too. In Europe, an index tracking bank stocks on the benchmark Stoxx 600 index climbed 30 per cent in November, its best month since 2009. Gregory Perdon, co-chief investment officer at Arbuthnot Latham, said the bullish trade for banks is squarely on in Europe as long as U.S.