In a very average economic climate the European banks put out excellent numbers this week. I was particularly impressed by Barclays and Santander’s respective performances. It seems like Barclays investment banking operations are starting to perform better, and Santander’s Latin American operations are still thriving. Santander could be a compelling investment at these levels. As much as I am concerned about Spain I think that the market is not appreciating how diversified Santander is across the globe. Santander is also pretty vanilla in terms of what they do so I am not worried about credit default swaps or any of that garbage that the bigger investment banks have. We’ll see if the banks can keep it up in the next quarter as conditions are a little worse.
INVESTING IN THE FINANCIAL MARKETS INVOLVES RISKS. OPTIONS ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR ALL INVESTORS.