While many investors have focused heavily on the artificial intelligence trade lately, the banking industry has quietly performed well too. One commonly used proxy of the industry’s performance is the Invesco KBW Bank ETF (NASDAQ: KBWB). Over the last 12 months, the fund has delivered a total return of around 35%, exceeding the S&P 500’s approximately 27% return over that period.
Notably, large-scale share buybacks have been a common theme among many bank stocks. After engaging in big-time buyback spending over the past several quarters, these three names are loading up again. All have huge buyback capacity equal to more than 10% of their market capitalizations. This allows these firms to continue lowering their outstanding share counts, adding a tailwind to per-share metrics.
