Bank stocks have lagged the broader market over the last month, and veteran analyst Dick Bove has one name to buy and sell into the end of the year.
"[I would] buy Bank of America and short Goldman Sachs," Bove said in a recent interview on CNBC's "Trading Nation."
The Vertical Research Group analyst sees extensive and continued growth ahead for Bank of America, which has surged 21 percent this year. Despite reporting on Oct. 13 that fixed income trading revenue fell 22 percent year over year in the third quarter, the bank beat its earnings on the top and bottom line, and Bove says it will only get better from here.
"Bank of American is phenomenally good. ... If we take a look at the growth of money supply [that we assume is at 6 percent] over the next four or five years and Bank of America deposits grow along with money supply, this means one out of every $9 in growth of money supply winds up in Bank of America," he said. "And then we take a look at the growth in GDP, which let's say is 5.5 percent on trend, and that means Bank of America gets one out of every $20 in terms of loans."
Given such optimistic projections, "it's very likely that Bank of America's earnings will be up 10 percent a year for the next five years," said Bove, who predicts shares of the bank could rally to $61.50 by 2023. This means he sees the bank soaring 130 percent from Friday's levels.
Goldman Sachs is another story. While the Dow component also beat earnings on the top and bottom line back on Oct. 17, Bove insists that trouble is to come for the bank based on its earnings over the past few years.
"Goldman Sachs earnings are now down from where they were 10 years ago," said Bove. "They're down below what they were five years ago, they're down below what they were last year, and I assume they're going to be down below where they were in the last quarter."
What's more, the analyst also sees management, particularly CEO Lloyd Blankfein, as standing in the way of the bank's growth.
"The net effect is this is a company which has this mystique, which is it doesn't matter where they earn money, as long as they pay their executives a lot," he said. "If they do that, then people want to buy the stock."
"But the fact is there needs to be a sweeping change at the top of this company, including a change in the CEO because it doesn't make money, it doesn't make money on an incremental basis," he added.
Shares of Goldman are down almost 1 percent from the start of 2017, a sharp contrast to Bank of America's performance.
