The Office of Thrift Supervision reported that U.S. thrifts squeezed out a $4 million profit in the second quarter, marking the industry’s first positive earnings since the third quarter of 2007. Although encouraging, unfortunately, the industry is not out of the woods yet as “problem thrifts” on the agency’s list continue to increase. Thrifts having significantly low capital reserves and other deficiencies rose to 40, up from 31 last quarter and 17 a year earlier. The news sent the Regional Bank HOLDRs (RKH) up 0.8% in morning trading.
Overall, all three major U.S. indexes rose in morning trading with the Dow Jones Industrial Average adding 0.2%, the S&P 500 jumping 0.2% and the Nasdaq adding 0.1%.
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Kevin Grewal contributed to this article.
