Money Center Banks vs. Regional Banks

For most of the second half of 2009 and 2010, regional and money center banks traded at pretty similar valuations.  The chart below illustrates this as the value of the KBE (money center bank ETF) vs the KRE (regional bank ETF).

Over the past few months though, driven by Europe fears, money center banks have badly underperformed regional ones.

Now the price to book multiple for KBE is .71 vs. .90 for the regional banks.

If Europe's problems were really solved yesterday, then maybe it's time for these metrics to begin to converge again.