Safcom all the way.... 4.50 might be where i would start going long

Are you aware you can short stocks without doing an actual trade? As an example if guru267 sold her holding at Ksh5.40 and then buys back at Ksh4.40 that is effectively shorting

Short CFC. Doing the research reveals a lot, but IMHO this bank has poor fundamentals. Bank's mission statement is also not clear. Management style I don't understand. What is it's core focus? Asset finance? Mortgages? Corporate? Retail? The growth prospects regionally are poor and the branch network will continue to cause funding problems.

If you are not convinced that the recent recovery is not a smoke screen just ask your local brokerage analyst to give you q-o-q analysis of the bank's financials. Choose any metric return on assets, interest margin, cost income ratio, earnings margin, commissions to expenses and you'll see that Q2 performance was the worst versus the past six quarters. Example of interest margin Q4' 09 was 5.0%, Q1 '10 was 4.2% and Q2' 10 was 3.8%. ROA for Q4, Q1 and Q2 was about 0.6%, 2.8% and 0.6% (poor asset returns, but these are my estimates, i cud be proven wrong).

The thing supporting this bank is its bond portfolio inflated by CBK's loose monetary policy (BBK & EB are just screwing people on interest margins, but HF is being managed extremely well). Bond prices won't keep rising as fast and you'll see that reflected in Q3 results. The only way they'll perform better in H2 is to improve non interest income and as one of their depositors, I finally understand why so many new charges are popping up all over the place with all the new products they're offering me. I get calls from their credit card people like every month.

So in the long run the bank cannot grow with injecting capital and on a valuation basis other peer banks such as (KCB, DTBK & NIC) offer greater value. Be alert when sinking your money treasury in this ship. Go short.

Scubidu..Well put, i think your 100% on the money. I have been thinking too that CFC is a good candidate for a short! Let me add some salt, what would you long as a hedge against this short assuming your a hedge fund manager, plus are there any industrials and commercials you would short at this moment and why,?

Hey,kudos to you! At 40 did you enter because it was cheap or you just speculated, what did you deem its value to be, coz i know people who jumped ship at 80-75.