Zacks Industry Rank Analysis Highlights: Bank of Hawaii, Bancorp South, JPMorgan Chase, Fifth Third and Regions Financial

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – January 28, 2010 – Zacks.com releases the latest Zacks Industry Rank. Stocks featured in this week’s analysis include Bank of Hawaii (BOH - Snapshot Report), Bancorp South (BXS - Snapshot Report), JPMorgan Chase (JPM - Analyst Report), Fifth Third (FITB - Analyst Report) and Regions Financial (RF - Analyst Report)

Zacks Industry Rank Analysis is written by Dirk Van Dijk, CFA, Chief Equity Strategist for Zacks.com.

Bad Banks

Many of the smaller regional banks have lots of exposure to commercial real estate, and those loans are going sour at an alarming rate. The FDIC was very busy last year taking over failed smaller banks, and it looks like their work is not over. The list of troubled banks is almost 600 names long (not all of them publically traded) and is growing each week.

This is an area that I would be extremely cautious about investing in. This is particularly true since the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) knuckled under to Congressional Pressure last year and suspended the mark-to-market accounting rules. This makes the financial statements of the banks even more opaque than they used to be. It raises the question for many whether the book values of these banks should be filed under fiction or non-fiction.

Most of the banks that have the dreaded Zacks #5 Rank are small, with some of the larger ones being Bank of Hawaii (BOH - Snapshot Report) and Bancorp South (BXS - Snapshot Report). However, some of the biggest and most important banks hold Zacks #4 Ranks, including JPMorgan Chase (JPM - Analyst Report), Fifth Third (FITB - Analyst Report) and Regions Financial (RF - Analyst Report).

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Contact: Dirk Van Dijk, CFA
Company: Zacks.com
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Read the full analyst report on BOH

Read the full analyst report on BXS

Read the full analyst report on JPM

Read the full analyst report on FITB

Read the full analyst report on RF