Wall Street Whispers: The Guts To Say 'Sell'

(TheStreet) - A prominent analyst called the case for buying Citigroup (NYSE: C) shares a "'trust me' story" this week, the first time in awhile anyone has seriously questioned a large bank's ability to meet aggressive growth targets.

Kudos to CLSA's Mike Mayo for breaking away from the pack. The analyst community itself has been a "trust me story" regarding bank stocks for the past few years, but failed to provide investors much reason to retain confidence.

Shares of the country's six largest banks have declined by an average of 27% since mid-April, when the sell-off first took hold. Since mid-July, when second-quarter reports started trickling in, they're down an average of 12%. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) has taken the most brutal beating, with drops of 37% or 20% over those time periods, while Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) has gotten hit the least hard, declining 21% or 4%.

Yet no analyst tracked by Thomson-Reuters has shifted to a sell rating on the stock of any large bank over the past three months. According to Briefing.com, the most recent "sell" downgrade came in January -- for Morgan Stanley, the stock that has retained the most relative value.

In fact, analysts have become even more bullish - adding 10 more buy ratings collectively to Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM).

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