In February 2023, after thorough research, I invested in two bank stocks: HSBC Holdings Plc and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA. Even after a few weeks, these investments produced some unrealized profits, which was refreshing considering the recent performance of my technology company shares.
A few days ago, however, news broke about Silicon Valley Bank, a bank that served many venture-backed companies, being shut down, in addition to the recent news about Silvergate Capital’s bank, which served businesses in the cryptocurrency industry. This was followed by news about Signature Bank. Due to these events, the stock prices of many other banks, including the above-mentioned picks of the author of the Negative Beta Blog, started to fall.
These events had a not-so-surprising effect: some customers started transferring their funds from smaller banks to larger ones. Another effect, however, was an increase in taking the services of fintech companies and neobanks.
Among all these rapidly following events, one of the most exciting news for me was that HSBC bought the UK arm of Silicon Valley Bank.
