You want to buy Money Center Banks (and Investment Bankers) at the depths of recession when business is horrible and after the stock has lost 50 to 90% of it value. Of course, you MUST first determine if the bank/investment banker can actually survive the downturn, because if it doesn't and goes bankrupt, you will lose everything. That is what happened to me with Washington Mutual. The key measure in cyclical bottoms is the Equity to Assets Ratio. A typical Equity to Assets ratio is 6. Anything above 6 means the bank is strong and will likely survive. The higher the better. Any number above 8 means the bank is extremely strong. In a bad recession, you will see numbers below 6. Avoid any bank with an Equity to Assets ratio less than 5; the risk is too high, that the bank could go under completely. When a Money Center Bank issues its quarterly earnings statement, the release is usually many pages long. They rarely mention the Equity to Assets ratio in their write-up, so instead, you have to scan through table after table until you find the Equity to Assets ratio. Sometimes, they don't even provide the ratio, so you have to find total assets and total equity and calculate the ratio yourself by dividing total equity by total assets and multiplying by 100. Once you buy a beaten down Money Center Bank/Investment Banker during the next recession/"banking crisis" you want to carefully monitor Equity to Assets ratio every quarter, until the economy improves and the bank's earnings start improving.