FINANCIAL CORPORATIONS PROFITS

By Spencer

The updated fourth quarter real GDP revisions really did not have much interesting information.

But maybe the most important data was the release of fourth quarter profits, especially for financial corporations. From the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2008 financial corporation profits fell from $370.3 billion to $122.4 billion, or about 66% while total profits only fell 21.5%.

Since their peak in 2002 financial corporations profits have fallen from 41.2% of corporations domestic profits to 26.5% in 2008. But in the fourth quarter of 2008 the share was only 14.1%, back where it was in 1959.

During this bear market financial stocks have fallen from some 22% of the S&P 500 capitalization to 9.8% at the end of February. Since write off are such a large share of the drop in financial corporations profits does financials share of the S&P falling under 10% signal a buying opportunity as it did for tech stocks at the end of the tech wreck?

Challenging question.