A First Republic Bank branch in New York, US, on Friday, March 10, 2023.
Jeenah Moon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Shares of First Republic were up sharply Tuesday as concern over the state of the regional bank appeared to ease after a day of heavy selling.
The stock was 57% higher in early trading and was one of the best-performing names in the SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF (KRE) — which rose 8%. Shares of other regional banks also surged. PacWest jumped 52%, KeyCorp gained 15% and Zions Bancorp advanced 17%.
Charles Schwab was also rebounding, gaining more than 9% after dropping nearly 12% on Monday.
Those moves come after regional banks fell sharply Monday, even after U.S. regulators took extraordinary measures to backstop all depositors in the now-failed Silicon Valley Bank. The KRE suffered its biggest one-day loss since March 2020, tumbling 12.3%.
First Republic led the way lower, falling 61.8%. Executive Chairman Jim Herbert told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that the bank was not seeing big outflows and was operating as usual. The bank also announced Sunday it received additional liquidity from JPMorgan and the Federal Reserve.
In addition the backstopping the deposits at SVB and Signature Bank, which was closed Sunday, federal regulators also announced efforts Sunday to stabilize the wider banking system. One of those is the Fed’s Bank Term Funding Program, which will allow banks to exchange certain high-quality assets for cash without booking mark-to-market losses.
And while the declines for regional bank stocks Monday showed that many investors were not convinced the regulators’ moves would be enough to stop more bank runs, there does not appear to have been widespread withdrawals from banks in recent days, according to Raymond James analyst Daniel Tamayo.
“Outflows did not accelerate during the last few days and, in fact, some banks have seen net inflows given movement in deposits from SVB and Signature Bank,” Tamayo said in a note to clients.
The rally held despite Moody’s Investors Service downgrading its view on the U.S. banking system to negative from stable.
Correction: The Fed on Sunday announced the Bank Term Funding Program. An earlier version misstated the name of the program.