UBS Is Buying Bank Stocks

UBS senior bank analyst Brennan Hawken said it's a good time to buy financials, according to an interview with CNBC.

Among others, Hawken has Buy ratings on Goldman Sachs Group Inc GS, Morgan Stanley MS, Citigroup Inc C and Bank of America Corp BAC.

UBS said it became more constructive on banking stocks about a month ago, shortly before JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM CEO Jamie Dimon bought millions of dollars worth of his company's stock.

In February, Dimon scooped two blocks of shares of JPMorgan at between $53.14 and $53.26 apiece. Altogether that was 500,000 shares and cost him a more than $26.5 million. Hawken has a Hold rating on JPMorgan.

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Banking stocks in the S&P 500 are down 12.3 percent this year as investors worry over loan losses in the ailing energy sector and persistently low interest rates. UBS is indeed expecting tighter credit, but Hawken noted that bank stocks are still trading at a discount to valuation.

"To me, we've priced in a great deal of bad news. Fundamentally, when you look through the loan books, it looks like if we see deterioration, it's really not going to be that bad. It ought to be manageable," he told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street."

"I want to buy them at this level," he added. "We're starting to see them base out."

According to Tipranks, Brennan Hawken has a success rate of 51 percent with an average return per recommendation of +2.3 percent.