Jim Jubak, number one columnist for MSN Money, just named his list of the “10 financials you’ll want to buy“, broken down into two categories - “famous but broken” and “Survivors ready to pick up the pieces”.  Of the ten, only one looks mildly appealing to me.  Read on to learn more.

Among the first category are Banc of America (symbol BAC), ICICI bank (symbol IBN), ING Group (symbol ING), Ping An Insurance Group (symbol PNGAY), and State Street (symbol STT).  Of that list, I’m not so sure Ping An Insurance is very famous; I haven’t heard of it until reading his article.  But more importantly, I’m not ready to put a single dollar of my money into any of those five financial, as the broken in Jubak’s “famous but broken” is far understated.  Those five names are on serious life support!

The other five “survivors” are a little more interesting, and a lot less scary.  The list includes HSBC (symbol HBC), Banco Itau Financeira (symbol ITU), Northern Trust (symbol NTRS), US Bancorp (symbol USB) and Wells Fargo (symbol WFC).

Here is my quick and dirty opinion of the Jubak’s “survivor” list:

  • HBC - Not easy to find financial data on Yahoo or Google Finance.  Also, to much exposure to emerging markets that are now waiting in line for IMF bailouts!
  • ITU - Based in Brazil.  No thank you!  Can you say whacky accounting and emerging market bailout?!?!
  • NTRS - I wouldn’t classify a company that lost $148 million last quarter as a “survivor”.
  • *USB - Much healthier than most other banks, and also heavily owned by Warren Buffett at prices higher than the current $25.80 per share.  They did post a $576 million profit in the latest quarter ending September 30, but they are certainly not immune from the financial crisis.  Net loan charge offs increased nearly 250% from Q3 2007 to Q3 2008, largely due to commercial loans gone wrong.  There latest charge off rate for the quarter was 1.19%.  But overall, I would agree with classifying them as a potential “survivor”.
  • WFC - It’s recent purchase of Wachovia makes them just to difficult to analyze.  It makes me wonder if the entire acquisition was performed solely as a tactic to complicate their reporting and conceal some of their ugliness.  On top of that, they are based in San Francisco, one of the biggest and still deflating real estate bubble markets in the country.  This one is just to risky for my taste!

Summary - A nice list of 10 potential financial investments from Jubak, but certainly not a list I want to blindly throw my money at.  The only one that looks even mildly appealing is US Bancorp, but even that one is not worth diving into.  Perhaps dipping a toe in is the preferred strategy.

Disclosure - I currently do not own shares in USB, but I may or may not purchase them in the future.  Also, as always, TRADE AT YOUR OWN RISK!