Longtime investor Bill Gross said Thursday that regional banks are poised to bounce back with the tailwind of falling interest rates. “Regional banks … benefit from lower interest rates,” Gross said on CNBC’s ” Last Call .” “We’ve gone down by 40 basis points. Many of these banks including Bank of America, including Schwab, have long-term bond positions … a 2% or 3% rise in prices is beneficial for them.” The co-founder of PIMCO earlier Thursday revealed in a post on X , formerly known as Twitter, that he bought beaten-down regional bank stocks: Truist Financial , Citizens Financial , KeyCorp and First Horizon . He said he started buying them Wednesday. Earlier this year in the wake of the banking crisis, regulators unveiled plans to force American banks with at least $100 billion in assets to issue debt and bolster so-called living wills in a move to protect the public in the event of more failures. Gross also noted that regional bank shares are now very cheap, and many of them offer hefty dividends. “Many of them are at 50% of book value, which is historically low. They yield, in many cases, 7% plus with a 40% payout ratio, which provides a decent amount of protection,” he said. “I think it’s a good bet relative to some of the Magnificent Seven and Apple, in particular.” The SPDR S & P Regional Banking ETF (KRE) , which tracks 140 regional banks, has fallen about 28% this year.
