US banks have a lot riding on the outcome of Election Day even if they’re not 100% sure how either candidate might treat their industry.
The “knee-jerk reaction,” according to KBW analyst Chris McGratty, is that a Donald Trump victory will mean a return to looser regulation of banks and more leniency in approving the sort of corporate mergers that produce big profits for Wall Street giants.
A Kamala Harris win, on the other hand, may mean that a more aggressive period of overseeing the nation’s largest financial institutions under President Joe Biden will continue.
“In my investor conversations, it definitely feels like people are pricing in Trump,” McGratty told Yahoo Finance. “So initially, if the election goes to Harris I would think banks would sell off,” he added.
The country’s largest lenders have had a great year thanks to the economy’s resilience during a period of elevated interest rates and a rebound in their investment banking and trading operations. The hope is next year could also turn out well, if lending and Wall Street dealmaking churn higher while interest rates fall.
An index tracking 24 of the largest domestically chartered US commercial banks (^BKX) is up 27% so far this year, outperforming the broader financial sector and major stock indexes.
Those other indexes for the financial sector (XLF), Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC), S&P 500 (^GSPC) are up 24%, 21% and 20%, respectively.
The consensus among industry observers is that a Trump White House might be more favorable for a run-up in financial stocks. After all, bank stocks rose 20% following the three months after Trump was elected in 2016.
But the challenge for bank executives as they assess the impact of a new president is that neither Trump or Harris have said much about how they want Washington to oversee the biggest banks in the US.
So instead their track records have largely spoken for them.
The Trump administration of last decade delivered a big corporate tax cut, and it also rolled back some big bank rules that were imposed in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
Harris, on the other hand, has touted her clash with big banks when she was California’s attorney general as an example of her willingness to take on powerful interests.
One big unknown is what either administration would do with a new set of controversial capital rules proposed by top bank regulators that would require lenders to set aside greater buffers for future losses.
The requirements are based on an international set of capital requirements known as Basel III imposed in the decade following the 2008 financial crisis.
