Australian Investment Blog

Now 6 years on from the GFC & Italy’s top banks need another ~30Bn Euro - how will this affect local banks?

Many retail Australian investors are now holding over 50% of their local equity portfolios in the high yielding and “big 4” banks. This has been an excellent investment since 2008. CBA for example has rallied almost 250% since the dark GFC days. This is before we even consider the excellent dividends that have been paid on the way - around $19 fully franked per share. However we must always keep our eyes out for changes to these large trends which do eventually occur e.g. CBA had an almost 30% correction from mid-2010. The headlines catching my eyes today were the performance from Italian banks (see title), more EU stimulus possible as confidence falls and NAB looks to IPO off its US subsidiary, Great Western Bank. Numerous articles have been written over recent months around the banks so rather than demonstrate my average literary skills I will set out in bullet point format my current views around the banks.