Financials are the (next) big thing

Looking back at the past three years, a lot has changed. But relative to the future, there is even more change thats about to come.

First of all, bank fees. Free checking has been the foundation and core of every bank program that has existed in America. Faced with stiff competition, large banks have had to offer everything from free checking to free atm fees at other bans.

Remember when there was no baggage fee? When you could check in your bags at the counter. The only way to impose ridiculous fees on consumers is by doing it all at the same time which is what all the airline companies did.

There's no more free checking, and you don't really have a choice. More profit for he banks.

Author owns C, JPM, BAC.

Update to PZE

PZE Price Sold at: $28.20

So this is a late blog entry but I ended up getting out of my PZE at a small profit and switching over to PBR. Petrobras does basically the same thing but its market cap is about 10x larger.

PBR Price bought at: $36.58

Ticker Symbol: PZE

Recommendation: Buy (Long-Term)
Latest Closing Price: $26.38
Market Cap: $2.66B
Revenue: $3.57B

Background: Semi-public Brazilian energy company as well as the largest company in Latin America by market cap. It is a significant oil producer with output of 2 million barrels of oil per day [wikipedia].

Recommendation: Soccer World Cup. World Olympics. With both world events coming to brazil in the next decade, we can be sure that political turmoil will keep Brazil in check as opposed to their close oil-producing neighbors including Venezuela. This is a simple buy. Brazil has a lot of light crude that is easy to process. Gas is expected to surge in 2011 and experts have already noted that it could hit $4/gallon in parts of the US [Yahoo].

Yahoo:http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Oils-surge-in-2010-paves-the-apf-1258480888.html?x=0

Disclosure: Author owns shares in PZE.