02 Nov Steve Eisman on what he learned that’s keeping him away from banks
Steve Eisman of the “The Big Short” fame said Thursday that one investment mantra he swears by is telling him that buying beaten-up bank stocks won’t be fruitful. “One thing I’ve learned in my career over the years is that buying something just because it’s cheap is a value trap and shorting something because it’s very expensive is a death wish,” Eisman said on CNBC’s ” Squawk Box .” “So, yes, the banks are cheap by any metric. So what?” Value traps are typically dirt-cheap stocks that may seem like appealing buying opportunities but tend to have extended periods of low valuation as reflected in below-market price-to-earnings multiples, with the share price struggling to advance. Eisman, who profited from the subprime mortgage crisis that spurred the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, as chronicled in Michael Lewis’ “The Big Short” and the Oscar-winning movie of the same name, has called the whole banking sector “uninvestable” due to risks from crimped profit margins and tougher regulations. “The thing that bothers me the most is that returns are going to go down just because of the increase in capital requirements,” the senior portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman said. Regulators have unveiled plans to force American banks with at least $100 billion in assets to issue debt and bolster so-called living wills in a move to protect the public in the event of more failures. Uncertainty caused by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank earlier this year triggered outflows at other regional banks as well as larger institutions, he said. KRE YTD mountain SPDR S & P Regional Banking ETF The SPDR S & P Regional Banking ETF , which tracks 140 regional banks, has fallen about 30% this year. “They say the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. Right now, people are completely indifferent,” Eisman said. Apart from banks, Eisman said companies selling high-priced real estate, cars and solar panels could be under pressure as lofty interest rates could keep consumers from borrowing. “I think [what’s] the most worrisome right now is anything that’s a large ticket that the consumer needs to borrow to buy so house, auto, solar panel, etc.,” Eisman said.