Monday's Financial Winners & Losers

Financial stocks were generally on the ropes Monday -- the NYSE Financial Sector Index was recently off about 1.6% at 8,166.91 -- though a number of names saw relief from last week's plummet.

Among those was Ambac (ABK Quote), shares of which surged as much as 26% in the regular session after Moody's affirmed the bond insurer's AAA rating with a stable outlook. The New York-based firm says it's "absolutely committed" to keeping that rating and is looking into "a number of solutions" to expand its capital position. Shares were recently up 15.5% at $26.35.

Moody's also maintained Radian's (RDN Quote) Aa3 rating, prodding shares up 3% to $10.94. MBIA (MBI Quote) kept its top-notch rating for now, though its outlook was set as negative, and the ratings agency is furthermore considering a downgrade on XL Capital (XL Quote), according to Reuters. Still, MBIA and XL were trading up 4.6% and 1.5%, respectively.

Also among today's financial gainers was National City (NCC Quote). Shares climbed 4.3% after the Cleveland bank said that it expects "no additional losses of significance" from its mortgage warehouse, having incurred about $200 million worth of charges after performing some housecleaning in October and November.

The bank said it cleared out "substantially all" nonagency eligible mortgages, second liens, and home equity lines, leaving only "agency eligible and other loans deemed readily salable." It also expects a fourth-quarter loan-loss provision of some $700 million, but shares were still up 71 cents to $17.33.