January 28, 2025 | Premium Service | As Q4 2024 earnings unfold, the story with many financials seems to be driven by the surge in production and market activity in Q3 and into Q4, but the end of the year was largely a swoon. Yet as we prepare to rebalance the WGA Bank Top 100 for Q1 2025, the exemplars are, well, still excellent and the rest of the large bank group continues to give ground from the Trump Trade peaks of early January 2025.
The top performing bank stock in the past year was SoFi Technology (SOFI), a bank holding company that prefers the language of Silicon Valley in its marketing materials and disclosure. We were skeptical of SOFI early on because of the fintech blah-blah and the sky high overhead costs. Banks generally don't focus on EBITDA. Yet SOFI is growing revenue and profitability and somehow is maintaining very low credit losses.