Today we highlight bullish-looking options flows seen in KRE (SPDR S&P Regional Banking) on Monday as the exchange traded fund makes a run at its highest levels in about a year.
The fund tracks the S&P Regional Banks Select Industry Index, with top holdings including CapitalSource CSE (1.83%), Webster Financial WBS (1.81%) and Trustmark TRMK (1.81%).
These smaller regional banks have clearly outperformed the larger, well known “money center” banks such as JP Morgan JPM, Bank of America BAC, and Citigroup C for instance, and we note that KRE is unchanged over the trailing one year period versus KBE (SPDR S&P Bank) down 17.28%.
Other ETFs to consider in the regional banking space are KBWR (PowerShares KBW Regional Banking) and IAT (iShares DJ U.S. Regional Banks), and for those looking to leverage bullish exposure to the space, KRU (ProShares Ultra KBW Regional Banking) delivers 2 times the daily leveraged long exposure to the same index that KRE tracks.
KRE faces some resistance in the low $27’s area, as we saw it touch these levels in early 2011, and it was as high as $28.89 in the spring of 2010.