Brendan: Let's move on to financials. What do you think, 2013, what's your top stock?
Matt: I was trying to think through which is the one financial stock that I'm looking forward to in 2013. The problem is, and maybe this is a little home bias here, but I like so many of the banks, going forward. Even the big banks that a lot of people are going to stay away from, I'm going to look at that.
I look at Bank of America (BAC 0.23%), I look at Citigroup (C -0.15%), I look at JPMorgan (JPM -0.40%). I go outside of the banks into the insurance, to AIG (AIG 0.48%) like I was talking about, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A 0.54%), which is still technically an insurer. It's a giant conglomerate.
Getting back to the big banks, you've got really low valuations here, and you've got meaningful change coming to these banks. Bank of America has cleared up a lot of its legal risk. Just yesterday it filed suit against MBIA. It's got a big, ongoing headache with them and they're trying to sort that out.
That could mean billions in a hit against Bank of America, but they've absorbed these billion-dollar legal hits again and again, and they do have a big reserve against it, but they're getting through these legal problems.
They've got different leadership than they had before the crisis. I think Brian Moynihan is doing a great job there. You look at Citigroup; they've got new management. I think Michael Corbat has promise. He's only been there for a little while, hasn't shown a whole lot there yet, but I think he's got definite promise.
You look at these changes, you look at the valuation, I think they're pretty attractive.
