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SAN and Eurobank are reasonable positions for me. Sberbank is one of my largest holdings, but may not qualify as European. Tiny position in DB. What is your thesis on Sberbank over others. The PE is amazing cheap, but I didn't know it's market cap was as big as it is... but, it is dominate in Russia.... but, it's trading close to book. DB since May 2019 went from $6 to $9. I know the pandemic has hit and everyone is suffering, but it seems to be executing on its restructuring plan and Tier 1 is getting better. Still bullish on DB. Christian Sewing is a doing a great job.

Has anyone revisited TEVA as an investment lately? Seems interesting in terms of paying down debt and stabilizing again.

All, I am doing research on stock options (LEAPs) relative to the equity price per day. I was not evaluate how premiums expand and contract through 1-2 year period. Does anyone know where I can find that daily and historical data (preferably free, to begin with)? I'll pay more for historical data when I want to fully back test. I'm mostly interested in LEAPs prices at the money. I am fine with starting from today's data and building historical data going forward. My challenge is I want to get LEAP pricing for a broad range of stocks. I don't want to manually do it for 20 stocks... I want to canvas at least 200 stocks and their at the money LEAP prices. Thoughts? I will share my findings when it's done for those who help. BTW, I have Interactive Brokers, if there is some API I can leverage. Again, I'm a former programmer.. but, it's been a while since I hacked anything together.

Anyone going to the Pabrai AGM in Chicago on September 14th?

SAN and Eurobank are reasonable positions for me. Sberbank is one of my largest holdings, but may not qualify as European. Tiny position in DB. What is your thesis on Sberbank over others. The PE is amazing cheap, but I didn't know it's market cap was as big as it is... but, it is dominate in Russia.... but, it's trading close to book.

I'm invested in DB and Commerzbank. Earlier this year, I was also invested in BCS, BNP, and EUFN. I was also in Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia, as a play on that economy. As a sector, it's almost like shooting fish an a barrel... As you can get some best in class companies at below BV. It's really like the US financial crisis, where every bank were taken to the woodshed.... That was a great time to pick up the GS, WFC, and JPMs.... as they were blackmailed by the BAC and C of the world. Also, money managers like State Street were great buy... so, right now, I don't think you can go wrong with playing the basket in EUFN. Or going top shelf with BNP, HSBC, UBS, etc.

Yup, GE, Harley Davidson, GS, etc.... that's his thing.

Jes Staley is doing a great job.... Comes from JPM pedigree and actually poached a lot of JPM talent to staff Barclays.

This was just released this week.. and it shows they are making a consorted effort to deleveraged and reducing from the 2% to 1.5% tier. I think Christian Sewing is doing the right thing, when dumb money realizes they are overmatched.... are they still dumb money when they understand their limitations? https://www.db.com/newsroom_news/2019/deutsche-bank-publishes-reductions-in-g-sib-indicators-for-2018-en-11476.htm

I am just looking at different valuation methods. But, let's look at the going concern exercise.... Let's say it stays flat for the next 5 years, 24B in revenue minus 21.5B in costs.... That's 2.5B in profit each year. If you buy it today, its market cap is 17.21B -- that gives you an earnings yield of 14%. Or a P/E of 6.8. Buying a below average, G-SIB, that is too big to fail -- at that multiple is not the worst thing you can do. That is not assuming any P/E expansion or TBV expansion, which I think is crazy... with something trading at .3 book.... I would be happy with it trading at .6 TB.

Yes, in an ideal world, most banks would have cheap retail/consumer funding with its virtually nil funding costs... It's like that in the US, but definitely not like that in Germany. In some ways, it's a blessing in disguise with negative EU rates. But, that is a subject for another day. If DB and Commerzbank goes out of business, I think the corporations that the average citizens work at will hurt. A leading, export economy has to have prominent banks to handle FX. DB essentially caters to corporate and institutional clients. One could think of their retail/consumer branches as an add-ons and just for PR/marketing. It's not something they can make a lot of money on for the various reasons you explained earlier, but you take what you little you can get. For corporate clients, DB and Commerzbank are their preferred conduit to the outside world. German owned, german lead, and german breed. You think the Sparkassen or Raiffaisenkasse can support the global trade and IB functions needed in a booming global economy. Would they be able to support BMW, Volkswagen, Bayer, Mercedes, etc? The economic climate is just not good for any EU banks... The EU, Middle East, and China economies are recovering... The only great market now is really US, which is dominated by JPM, GS, Citi, etc. I would like to see how DB, Barclays, BNP all do when EU comes back online.

I would concur that Commerzbank dodged a bullet with DB. I am not sure if this was brokered by the government to get more M&A activity because they need an exit strategy for their 15% ownership. Two, they really do need a healthy german bank for their next down turn. I concur that Commerzbank is so much more advanced in their IT and compliance systems and they are getting more efficient.. Definitely shouldn't be trading at .3 TBV... Any takeover is a net positive with the negative goodwill. I was hoping DB would buy them just for access to their IT systems.

Upvote! :D

They saw a better offer from Unicredit and ING probably. By definition a merger with Commerzbank and DB, would cause a lot of closed branches and people. If you look at the DB employee numbers, most of the layoffs has been in the US and in the IB side. There has not been an opportunity to streamline their german base. They really need to offload their bloated employee structure, it is similar to the GM where the union kills the company.... If Olaf was giving them an opportunity, it would be great for both Commerzbank and DB. Most Commerzbank branches are literally across the street as a DB branch, so just streamlining the branch network like the US is a huge plus.... It's definitely bad PR, but it's economically the right strategy to pursue. For Paul A., I am not a big fan of him... and he is way overpaid.. but, essentially, their current strategy is not wrong... streamline costs at $21.5 steadystate.... keep revenue at 24B and hope for EU rates and IB markets in Europe to come back online.... Once they do, the revenue will go up and straight to the bottom line.... It's pretty simple, but it requires patience. Without replacing their human capital with IT, they will always have a bloated cost structure.. But, give me costs static at $21.5B and revenues of 24B -26B... and I'll take the 2B-3B each year, every year.... it doesn't have to be great.. it just has to be par.

If DB can get to the valuation of BNP or SAN, it would be a double or triple. There are structural issues with EU rates. That's a major buzzkill for all EU banks. But, it cannot stay negative for long. There are greenshoots of Italian/Spanish NPL being runoff... Once those larger countries are back to par, I think the EU can get back to a normalized rate structure. But, again, those rates are hurting everyone (HSBC, BNP, SocGen) not just DB. It is also unfortunate that the IB in Europe has dried up. But, when it comes back online, BNP and Barclays' earnings will perk up too.. and so to, DB. But, everyone is looks at this worst case/frost lasting forever. But, based upon their cost projects of 21.5B... and revenue above that is gravy. I wish they would go into run-off and just give shareholders their $25 Euros and call it a day.. but, it's too big to fail... and that might be a good thing.