Financial stocks are a sea of red in pre-market trading, even after the US government’s Sunday evening pledge to cover bank deposits.
The steepest decline has been in shares of First Republic, which is down more than 60 per cent in pre-market trading. And the sell-off is happening on fairly high volume. Notice (via FactSet) that it’s doing higher volumes pre-market than Bank of America:
The stock may be simply reflecting the possibility that regulators use their authority to determine that, if deposit outflows pick up enough, it’s already dead. (Signature Bank’s management team was reportedly taken by surprise by the news of their receivership, according to Bloomberg. Our market contacts were surprised as well.)