Diamonds and Dogs

6/28/17

The banks are back. The financials are all rallying 1%-2% at or near 52 week highs ahead of the Fed stress test. After hours all 34 big US banks passed their stress tests and proceeded to announce dividend hikes and increasses to share buybacks. Citigroup (C ) doubled their dividend and increased their share buyback by $15.6 billion. JP Morgan also raised its dividend and increased their buyback over $19 billion. Buybacks are great, but not when the stocks are at 10 year highs. Ugh.

 Paychex (PAYX) takes a hit dropping as much as 3% to a new low for the year following earnings. The company actually beat earnings and sales estimates, but issued downside earnings guidance for 2018 and sees 2018 sales only growing 5% to $3.309 billion below estimates.