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The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Capital One, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – February 17, 2021 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Capital One Financial Corporation (COF - Free Report) , Wells Fargo & Company (WFC - Free Report) , JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM - Free Report) , Citigroup Inc. (C - Free Report) and Morgan Stanley (MS - Free Report) .

Here are highlights from Tuesday’s Analyst Blog:

Stress Test Scenarios for 2021 Revealed: Will Big Banks Pass?

The Federal Reserve has revealed hypothetical scenarios with regard to the 2021 stress test for major banks. The test helps evaluate safety and soundness of the banking sector.

Vice Chair for Supervision Randal K. Quarles said “The banking sector has provided critical support to the economic recovery over the past year. Although uncertainty remains, this stress test will give the public additional information on its resilience.”

Banks must submit their capital plans to the Fed by Apr 6. The results of the test will be released by June 2021-end.

Before we check out this year’s hypothetical scenarios, let’s see what happened in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic.

This is the third time that banks will be undergoing stress tests in the past 12 months. Last year, the Fed had conducted tests twice (June and December) amid the coronavirus-related mayhem.

Though banks cleared the tests, the Fed had restricted their capital plans – maintaining dividend rate and no share repurchases – in order to preserve liquidity owing to pandemic induced economic slowdown. This had even resulted in few banks like Capital One and Wells Fargo cutting their quarterly dividends.

While some banks including JPMorganCitigroup and Morgan Stanley have resumed buybacks in first-quarter 2021 (following the central bank’s approval), total distributions are based on a bank's trailing four-quarter average net income. Also, Capital One has now restored dividend to the pre-COVID-19 level.

2021 Hypothetical Scenarios

Like always, the central bank has come out with two hypothetical scenarios – Baseline and Severely Adverse. This covers 13 quarters through the first quarter of 2024.

The baseline scenario includes hypothetical conditions based on average projections from a survey of economic forecasters. This scenario includes the domestic economy expanding as quarterly real GDP growth averages 4% (annual rate) this year and then shrinks to 2.5% by 2022-end and further to 2.25% at the end of the scenario period.

Further, the unemployment rate gradually falls from the 2020-end level of 6.75% to 4.5% by first-quarter 2024. Also, equity market volatility declines, house prices improve and commercial real estate price falls. The hypothetical scenario includes a “steady expansion in international economic activity” as well.

The severely adverse scenario has a “hypothetical set of conditions” to test major banks' resilience in an adverse economic backdrop. It is characterized by severe global recession along with heightened stress in commercial real estate and corporate debt markets.

Under this scenario, the unemployment rate would increase to 10.75% by the third quarter of 2022. Further, real GDP in that same time frame would fall 4%, with equity prices plunging 55%. Additionally, severe recessions in the eurozone, the U.K., and Japan, and a substantial slowdown of activity (still with positive growth for most of the scenario period) in “developing Asia” are part of this hypothetical scenario.

How are Banks Likely to Fare?

This time 19 major banks, with more than $250 billion in assets, are part of the stress test. Smaller banks (with assets of $100 billion to $250 billion) face stress tests every alternate year, although they can opt to be part of this year’s stress test.

Moreover, 10 of these 19 banks with the large trading operations will be tested against a hypothetical global market shock, while 12 of these companies that have significant trading or processing operations will be tested against the failure of their largest counterparty too.

Despite the severity of last year’s “mid-cycle” stress test, banks did well. Thus, banks are expected to clear the stress test this time as well.

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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.

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