Citigroup: Financial Winners and Losers (Update2)

(Updated for stock-price movements throughout.)

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Citigroup(C Quote) shares led financial equities higher Wednesday, clawing back their losses from the previous session, as investors and traders awaited the afternoon statement from the Federal Reserve's policy chieftains, who, as widely expected, left rates unchanged.

The key Fed Funds rate will remain at its historic near-zero level, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues said in a statement following their August 11-12 meeting in Washington.

The Fed governors also made remarks that seemed to bolster the idea that a nascent economic recovery has taken hold, or is about to. Data released since the Fed's last meeting, the statement read, "suggests that economic activity is leveling out."

Stocks in general rose sharply Wednesday -- gaining momentum after the Fed released its encouraging words -- with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up more than 170 points as the session entered its last hour of trading.

Citigroup's highly volatile stock was up 27 cents, or 7.6% -- regaining its loss from yesterday and then some -- to $3.96. Volume was heavy, with 755 million shares changing hands; daily turnover averages about 410 million shares.

On Tuesday, Citigroup released its second-quarter progress report (part of its duties under the Troubled Asset Relief Program), saying that it approved $6 billion in loans.

The bank also said that it plans to re-enter the warehouse lending business, which it had largely given up at the outset of the credit crisis. Citi said it will pump some $2 billion into the independent mortgage industry in a bid to breathe life into that moribund business (and, of course, to seek profits).

Banking stocks, hurt during Tuesday's session by data suggesting that mortgage rates fell the previous week, bounced back Wednesday, as further housing-related figures came to light -- these ones to be filed in the optimistic "green-shoots" bin: the National Association of Realtors, a trade group, said home prices in the U.S. rose 4% in the second quarter compared with the first, thought that's still 16% below year-ago levels.