JPMorgan Chase: Financial Winners & Losers

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Stocks in the financial sector on Wednesday recovered losses seen during the prior day's trading session as investors became more confident of the European markets.

Bank stocks were for the most part in the black late in the trading session on Wednesday, remaining positive even after the release of the Federal Reserve's beige book, which said it expected slower economic growth across U.S. districts. The Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF), an exchange traded fund tracking the financial services sector, chugged 1.4% higher in afternoon trading to $14.39.

Leading the pack were several large banks including JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS) and BB&T (BBT) as well as midsized regional banks like Regions Financial (RF), Keycorp (KEY) and Huntington Bancshares (HBAN).

H&R Block (HRB) shares were 3.3% higher, to $12.77, despite being downgraded by Oppenheimer to perform from outperform. The stock hit a 52-week-low of $11.98 fresh out of the gate this morning, but rebounded with strong trading volume as the day went on of about 6.6 million shares.

Financial sector losers included shares of the electronic payment firms. Visa (V) fell 3.8% to $68.68 on strong trading volume of roughly 8 million shares after being downgraded by Bank of America Merrill Lynch to underperform from neutral.

The analysts apparently have growing concerns about the effect of debit regulation under the new financial reform measures as well as structural concerns regarding the world's largest payments firm.

MasterCard (MA) shares were also falling about 2.4% to $195.68, coming close to its 52-week-low share price of $193, hit on July 20.

--Written by Laurie Kulikowski in New York.

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