January has come to a close this year. The S&P; 500 is down 8.57%. The Financials in the index are down an incredible 26.55% in just one month.

Worldwide bank stock stocks continue to get hammered as the credit crisis deepens. Banks are doing everything they can to shore up their capital. Investors have lost trust in the numbers reported by banks and this has led to banks being treated as “rotten fish”.

To get a feel for how the foreign banks have performed this month I looked at the performance data and what I found is interesting.

The five best performing foreign banks YTD are:
1.Woori Finance (WF)
YTD Change: 16.75%

2. Banco Macro (BMA)
YTD Change: 13.77%

3.Corpbanca (BCA)
YTD Change: 5.00%

4. Banco de Chile (BCH)
YTD Change: 4.92%

5. Banco Santander Chile (SAN)
YTD Change: 1.00%

In the above list except Woori Finance of South Korea, all the other banks are from Latin America.

The five worst performing foreign banks YTD are:
1. Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)
YTD Change: -60.45%

2. Barclays Bank of Scotland (BCS)
YTD Change: -41.73%

3. Allied Irish Bank (AIB)
YTD Change: -41.58%

4. Bank of Ireland (IRE)
YTD Change: -37.11%

5. Deutsche Bank (DB)
YTD Change: -36.96%

All the worst performing banks above are European banks with British and Irish banks being the biggest losers. There is some talk in the media that the RBS might be nationalized completely and the commons wiped out.

Long : RBS, BCH