I would like to see a straw poll on opinions of members in buying into the Irish banks.

Was thinking of buying into AIB and BOI. What say you pinsters?

I still reckon Anglo is focked. They may drag another down with them with this shotgun marriage provision in the new bill.

I would not recommend buying any Irish bank shares, just my 2c, partially because of what the poster above me says, partially because I don't trust their risk modelling, and partially because I think there are better returns available.

Hear hear! If you want to buy bank shares look to buy the winners - of which there are none in Ireland. While the Irish banks spend the next few years cleaning up their balance sheets the likes of HSBC, BNP, Barclays and JPMorgan (amongst others) are becoming stronger.

work some low bids, any further weakness in the market without short sellers you will get filled on excellent prices

There's a chance the plan could work and the rewards would be very good. A balanced portfolio may now consider a small amount of Irish bank shares.

not to encourage anybody else but i bought anglo @ 2.94 tuesday @ 8.15am. sold yesterday mid morn for 4.55

thats 55% in 24 hours, there is profit in volatility, i did it when i heard about the govt. guarantee coming a day after a 46% drop on their price, i figured there would be a rebound but also decided that i'd jump at 20% up or down, as it turned out the upshot was big enough that by the time the sell executed it was higher. you can also lose your ass doing things like this (important to remember that bit the most!)

In order to buy the shares here you have to assume that the Irish banks will use this breathing space to do the right thing - for me that is a leap of faith. Moreover, the Irish economy is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. We have no clear idea on loan losses, or indeed if the banks will actually acknowledge that they have made material losses on some of their lending.

I stick by my earlier point. If you think that financials (globally) are near a turning point there are much better options available to play the upside.

The Irish banking stocks will probably continue to bounce but I see no LT winners among them.

MB,
If you could (pm would be fine) be able to answer these?
Who do you use for trading?
(sorry if this sounds a novicey but..) Is it a simple case of ringing up (after all KYC forms/credit checks filled out) saying buy and then ringing and saying sell when you want?

There's been a few opportunities for this. The UK shorts bans was announced on the pin Thursday 25th 6.30pm, so there was another chance there. You wanna be watching your screen though!

I think the prices look a bit high at the moment, bit of downside risk there when the next shock comes along.

Morgan Kelly makes a good point to buy for a tactical bounce. Not a long term value play though.

What sort of profit margin were you looking at once transaction costs were factored in? I take it there was a buying cost and a selling cost, these can eat into margins significantly.

About 1.5-2%??