Gainers And Losers In The Financial Sector On March 4 (C, BAC, JPM, WFC, MS, GS, BBT, FITB, MTB)

The financial sector had its share of losers and gainers yesterday. Among the clear gainers was Citigroup (NYSE: C), which shot up after the company’s CEO Vikram Pandit appeared on Capitol Hill to testify before a congressional panel on government bailout funds. He thanked the US government and taxpayers for providing $45 billion of bailout money with the help of which the bank could come out of the financial crisis. C went up as high as $3.48 before losing ground to close at $3.43, reflecting a 0.88% gain.

Meanwhile, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) added 0.18% to close at $16.40 after the Treasury Department said that it has made $1.54 billion from the sale of 272.17 million BAC warrants. The treasury had received these warrants as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Among the other US bank stocks that gained yesterday were Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) that gained 0.82% and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) that added 0.94%. Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) recovered from the reduction in estimates by Rochdale Securities analyst Dick Bove a day before to climb 3.73%. Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), which had also slumped following estimate reduction by Bove, advanced 3.11% to $29.20 after Bove clarified that Morgan's longer-term outlook was positive.

In his research note, Bove said that MS’ new strategy was exciting. Another bank that traded higher on analyst recommendation was BB&T (NYSE: BBT), which has recently repaid TARP bailout funds. Following the repayment, analysts at Bernstein upgraded BBT to “outperform” from “market perform,” as they now expect the company’s share count to become steady. BB&T rose 1.57% to $27.81.

Losers in the financial sector were Fifth Third Bancorp (NASDAQ: FITB) and M&T Bank (NYSE: MTB), which suffered after Bernstein analysts slashed their rating from “outperform” to “market perform.” While FITB lost 1.67%, MTB fell 0.57%.

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