Out Fox The $treet

  First Republic continues volatile trading due to uncertainty regarding the bank's funding sources despite multiple deals. The bank was highly dependent on business accounts with an average deposit balance of $490,000 leading to these uninsured accounts likely fleeing the regional bank. Any rescue package would be highly dilutive with the market cap down to $3 billion. Investors should be wary that all of the recent bank deals have wiped out or diluted shareholders. First Republic Bank  ( NYSE: FRC ) shareholders have been on a roller coaster ride since the regional bank was first hit by worries of a run on deposits. Federal bank regulators and large domestic banks have  all offered solutions to help resolve the deposit run on First Republic, but investors should be weary of these gifts considering other bank resolutions in this crisis. My investment thesis is Neutral on the bank stock with binary outcomes leading to unacceptable risk. Read the full article on Seeking A...

Back on November 16th, Stone Fox Cap added to its Regions Financial (RF) position when the stock swooned on the back of the departures of the Chief Risk Officer and others in the risk management area. The initial fear and typical of Wall Street was to be concerned that this was an indication that problem loans were escalating out of control and RF would be posting some horrible numbers. While on the surface that might be a plausible thought, it just didn't pass the rigor test. RF had performed badly during the financial crisis caught with numerous bad loans in Georgia and Florida. So if the CRO hadn't prevented RF from avoiding the housing crisis, why was the market concerned when he left? If anything, it seemed long overdue. Back in our article on the 16th [ Trade:Added Regions Financial on Management Shakeup ], we suggested that this was excellent news and hence bought more shares around $5.7. Management had followed up on the resignations that the BOD wanted them to leav...

Bought some more stock of Regions Financial (RF) in the Opportunistic (Long only) portfolio. Only had a 2% position and I doubled it to roughly 4% to bring it in line with the position weighting in the newly started model on Covestor.com that will be launched to the public in about a month. RF was down some 9% at one point today after announcing management changes in the credit risk department. Naturally the stock dropped on news of a shakeup in management especially with several individuals 'retiring' in one department . I'm sure most sellers assumed more bad news on the way or possibly even some yucky fraud situation. (ok its not that natural to always shoot first without understanding the news but thats how the market works). Whats so bad about the Chief Risk Officer and Director of Credit Risk leaving when they were the risk leaders when the problems occurred? What risk did they help mitigate anyway? This is another example of the market flying off the handle before...