No Pain, No Gain: European Banks

News that Italian bank UniCredit posted a large loss for the fourth quarter-- as it endeavors to clean up its balance sheet and cut its workforce in the face of the ECB's pending review of large banks-- was met with investor enthusiasm, sending shares up more than 6%.  In fact, most banks in the MSCI Europe index have been performing well so far this year:



Is this positive performance the group's reward for its progress in reducing short-term debt levels from an industry average of over 200% in 1993 to over 100% in 2009 to just 41% today?:



More than half of the group continues to trade below book value:



That could change if investors continue to search for value among European financial stocks:



And, in turn, we could see more point-and-figure charts with the beginnings of break-out patterns as these companies work to emerge from multi-year bases: