Wednesday's Financial Winners & Losers

Financial stocks rebounded Wednesday after an excruciating couple of days as bargain hunters emerged in droves.

Among the winners was RAM Reinsurance (RAMR), which had taken a nosedive yesterday on word its chief financial officer, Rick Lutenski, will resign effective Sept. 29. Today, shares of the Bermuda-based company pulled back up to jump 84 cents, or 10.2%, to $9.10.

LandAmerica Financial (LFG) was also climbing on yesterday's postclose announcement that it will buy back up to 1.5 million more of its shares on top of the roughly 710,000 shares remaining from a prior program.

The Richmond, Va., insurer also expects ultimately to slash in the second half around 1,100 jobs, or roughly 13% of its residential and lender-service groups as of June 30, "as part of an effort to reduce costs in response to decreased mortgage loan originations and to improve operating efficiencies."

LandAmerica shares traded up 5.1% to $54.24 to help prop up the NYSE Financial Sector Index, which was leaping 1.3% to about 8,898. Barclays (BCS), up 4% to mostly recover from yesterday's drop, also lent support to the index.

Rising at least 2.5% apiece, meanwhile, were fellow tracker components Astoria Financial (AF), broker BlackRock (BLK) and specialist firm LaBranche (LAB).

The KBW Bank Index was up 0.1% to about 104.