There are a lot of ways to measure how far Citigroup (C) has fallen. C’s market cap is now approximately $105 billion. Banco Santander, a Spanish-Brazilian bank, now has a larger market cap than Citigroup:
CITIGROUP INC
(NYSE: C)
| Last Trade: | 20.28 |
| Trade Time: | 11:48AM ET |
| Change: |  0.79 (3.75%) |
| Prev Close: | 21.07 |
| Open: | 21.47 |
| Bid: | N/A |
| Ask: | N/A |
| 1y Target Est: | 27.91 |
| Day’s Range: | 19.99 – 21.58 |
| 52wk Range: | 19.69 – 55.55 |
| Volume: | 73,928,697 |
| Avg Vol (3m): | 104,097,000 |
| Market Cap: | 105.58B |
| P/E (ttm): | 28.33 |
| EPS (ttm): | 0.717 |
| Div & Yield: | 1.28 (6.00%) |
BANCO SANTANDER ADR
(NYSE: STD)
| Last Trade: | 18.02 |
| Trade Time: | 11:49AM ET |
| Change: | 0.14 (0.77%) |
| Prev Close: | 18.16 |
| Open: | 18.50 |
| Bid: | N/A |
| Ask: | N/A |
| 1y Target Est: | 27.00 |
| Day’s Range: | 17.86 – 18.50 |
| 52wk Range: | 16.09 – 22.34 |
| Volume: | 698,000 |
| Avg Vol (3m): | 1,669,250 |
| Market Cap: | 112.70B |
| P/E (ttm): | 8.11 |
| EPS (ttm): | 2.22 |
| Div & Yield: | 1.64 (9.10%) |
Who gave Santander the ticker “STD”? Hilarious.
However, smart investors could learn a lot from this. The Spanish and Irish mortgage markets were the most overleveraged in the world. There’s only one way the Spanish banks have survived, let alone outperformed their American peers: the ECB has extended them massive amounts of loans (collateralized by even-more-garbage MBS) off-market.
The eurozone is also choking on Chinese imports now, as the USD has dragged the dollar-pegged yuan down with it, even as the euro has taken off. The euro’s supremacy is very much conventional wisdom, but that conventional wisdom is very fragile.
Beware the euro …
