Regional Banks
The credit and deposit canary. NII sensitivity, CRE exposure, and funding costs make this the first equity complex to crack when rates or credit turn — and the highest-torque recovery trade when they ease. March 2023 is the case study.
Performance
Follow the theme against the wider market.
Series before each basket's creation date are a backtest of the membership as of creation; live tracking starts at creation.
| Return | 1 day | 5 days | 20 days | 60 days | MTD | YTD | 1 year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basket | -0.0% | +1.5% | -2.3% | +6.3% | +2.9% | +16.0% | +20.9% |
| vs S&P 500 | +0.3% | +1.3% | -2.0% | -0.0% | +2.4% | +2.5% | +1.2% |
Inside the basket · 9 stocks
Current members and the reasoning behind each inclusion. Returns are for individual stocks.
| Why it’s included | Added | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TFC | Southeast footprint | +0.1% | +2.4% | -0.4% | +8.2% | 2026-06-11 |
| USB | Scale regional, payments mix | -0.3% | +1.4% | -0.9% | +21.0% | 2026-06-11 |
| KEY | Rate-sensitivity case study of 2023 | +0.3% | +2.2% | -1.5% | +10.6% | 2026-06-11 |
| RF | Southeast deposits franchise | -0.1% | +1.3% | -2.2% | +15.6% | 2026-06-11 |
| CFG | Northeast consumer/commercial | -0.1% | +1.5% | -2.6% | +23.7% | 2026-06-11 |
| PNC | Super-regional bellwether | +0.2% | +1.4% | -2.8% | +20.4% | 2026-06-11 |
| HBAN | Ohio-centered retail/commercial | -0.2% | +0.7% | -3.0% | +0.1% | 2026-06-11 |
| MTB | CRE-heavy book — the exposure to watch | -0.1% | +1.7% | -3.6% | +21.5% | 2026-06-11 |
| FITB | Midwest commercial lending | -0.2% | +0.6% | -3.9% | +19.1% | 2026-06-11 |
How this basket is built
Equal-weighted, monthly-rebalanced, buy-and-hold between rebalances; dated membership changes take effect same-day.
Tracked since 2026-06-11. Membership decisions are documented below.
Read the methodology →Reading the returns
Basket returns include dividends. “vs S&P 500” compares the basket’s compounded growth with the benchmark’s. Green means positive; red means negative.
Cross-checked against KRE. Daily return correlation: 0.96 across 1678 sessions. KRE is dominated by mid-cap banks — the FW 3000 version includes that tier; the S&P version is the large-cap end
Membership history & changes
- expand
FW 3000 pass: added WAL, EWBC, WBS, PNFP, SSB, CFR, PB, ZION, FHN, BOKF — names outside the S&P 500 but inside our broad universe; they count only in the FW 3000 version of this basket. Effective-dated to creation so the broad backtest covers the full set. The S&P 500 basket is unchanged.
- review
Widening pass: the remaining nine are every S&P 500 regional/super-regional; GICS now files PNC, USB and TFC under diversified banks but their deposit and credit economics keep them here. Reference pinned to KRE.
- drop
ZION removed — no longer in the S&P 500 universe (flagged by the widening pass’s constituent check).
- create
Initial composition: ten S&P 500 regionals.