To buy back banks or to bank on buying others? Are our banks repaired enough for you to profit on.

It always gets to me when people say "well we are in a recession you know" or "times are harder these days" referring back to the 2008 crash. People who do not understand basic Monterey factors should not be aloud to comment on the economy and how it is or isn't performing. Yet I am a hypocrite for I won't invest in banks for the fear they are once again doomed to collapse in on themselves (I refuse to accept Berkshire Hathaway is a bank as I see it more as a VERY large hedge fund).

Yes six long years after the annum of the crash I still won't be seen with a bank in my portfolio and so I thought it was an ideal time too look at if this was me merely being stupid or if I was on to something. Another problem I have with investing in banks is the book value. Yes most banks sit on assets in the hundreds of billions if not trillions but their debts are excessive too.

Too see if this point stood I took the yearly growth rate of (in my opinion) the five largest American banks and using google finance plotted them. Here we see Wells Fargo, J.P.Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America all against one another.

 

 

Here we can see how diverse the growth rates are, admittedly all are above the 2% inflation rate here in the u.k  the average is just 21% this is a little shy of my "big three technology companies" seen bellow.

 

 

The average of these three is 36% in the last year showing that although the banks are returning they are still not quite doing as well as the technological equivalents. As with anything in the stock market though it all depends on who you buy and when you buy them, personally I have had a position in google for a year now and so I have seen a large return, had this been shares in apple I would be rather annoyed at myself now that it wasn't Bank Of America.

 

This post has been much longer then expected so I will conclude this with a second entry soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking for something new

I recently shorted my Tesla and Cisco shares. The reason? Well Tesla hit the profit margin aim I had given them and Cisco felt like it was getting nowhere at any point in the future. I could be wrong, in fact I probably am yet other car manufacturers are quickly catching Tesla up if they have not already surpassed them and so I believe that dogs day is nearly over.

That therefore leaves me in a predicament as I now have a lot of cash floating around and no idea what stock to buy. I could therefore invest in something I have previously tried and that list is every growing eBay, Microsoft or Facebook for example but instead I feel like I want to try something new, heck you don't lean from keep repeating your trades (look at the blackberry saga I went through).

So I am weighing up many opportunities but it seems right now I have a stake in all the companies I feel I want to be involved with and so maybe I shall just increase my stake in one of them, for now though the hunt is on.