With the banks getting a rogering at the current Royal Commission where the only people who are surprised that the banks treat their customers like shit are the banks themselves, who reward such behaviour and politicians who want lucrative directorships and consultancy with banks when they leave politics. Combined the touted changes to dividend imputation much has been said about he performance of the share price of ANZ, CBA, NAB, and WBC. The recent performance of the banks has been placed within the context of these two events which is wonderfully sloppy thinking – a quick look at the long term price of the four major banks shows something very interesting.
The banks all peaked in early 2015 and they have been moving downwards ever since – unfortunately facts have once again got in the way of an interesting narrative. As to why the banks peaked three years ago is irrelevant – all that matters is that they did. The same picture emerges when you look at the relative performance of the big four.
Performance peaked in 2015 and then tapered off – since then the banks have been in drawdown. This is the issue with commentators in the finance arena, they have no concept of being able to place moves in the market within any form of long term context. As such they jumped to the easiest explanation they can lay their hands on. Having met many commentators over the years my observation as to why this occurs is quite simple – they are too stupid and too lazy to do anything else.
