Financial Winners & Losers: Ohio Banks

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The big boys in the financial sector were not the winners today.

Indeed, if the bulge bracket firms are doing God's work, as Goldman Sachs(symbol)CEO Lloyd Blankfield infamously suggested last week, the almighty must have been out of the office today. Or, he just has decided that some Ohio regional banks and insurers were the place to play.

All the major banking stocks ended in negative territory. Lazard(LAZ) and Morgan Stanley(MS) led the retreat, being down 3.53% and 3.06% respectively. The trend was clear: Banks with big market caps were beaten down during a day which seemed to bring out all sorts of new fears about an economic recovery.

Is it Meredith Whitney's fault for turning bearish on the sector in recent days, or was it just the market freefall extending its tail to the banking sector today?

Deutsche Bank(DB) dropped 2.82% and Credit Suisse(CS) dipped 2.80%; while UBS(UBS) kept to the trend, shedding 2.75% of its share price.

Over at God's personal banker, Goldman Sachs, shares were down 2.30% on the day.

JP Morgan Chase(JPM) (-1.91%), Wells Fargo(WFC) (-1.87%), Bank of America(BAC) (-1.65%) and AIG(AIG) (-1.38%) were all down as well.

American Express(AXP) and Citigroup(C) fared well by comparison, losing 1.03% and 0.7% respectively. Some of Amex's competitors in the credit card business took it on the chin as a result of fears about the U.S. recovery falling short of expectations: Capital One Financial(COF)was down 5.22% and Discover Financial (DFS) was down 3.56%.