FocusPoint Research

FocusPoint Research delivers actionable research on the U.S. banking industry, with a focus on value-creating special situations. Over 500 publicly-traded banks comprise the U.S. banking sector, offering ample opportunities for misunderstood and under-followed investments to create alpha for investors.

FocusPoint’s management has over 25 years of experience analyzing the U.S. banking industry. Jeffrey Miller started his career in 1994 at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, where he was a senior analyst covering approximately one-third of the firm’s research universe. KBW’s coverage was rated #1 in Institutional Investor Magazine’s annual survey every year of his tenure. He founded a financial-services focused investment firm in 1997, and was a routinely a top 5 performing fund in this category. Jeff’s buy-side and sell-side experience provides him with a unique perspective on the shortcomings of traditional banking industry research and the need for the opportunistic, timely idea generation provided by FocusPoint.

FocusPoint utilizes a proprietary screening model that combines the main drivers of bank stock performance with catalysts for valuation realization. Investable ideas generally fall into three categories: turnaround/restructuring stories where management is focused on problem resolution, misunderstood M&A transactions, and recent IPOs lacking unbiased research coverage. Short-ideas are more prevalent during economically stressed time periods, and generally focus on poor management and weak credit and capital controls.

FocusPoint publishes 18-24 comprehensive investment ideas annually, with a mix of long and short recommendations. Ideas are actionable, with 6 to 18 month time horizons. FocusPoint also covers every U.S. bank IPO before the company comes public.

The "Weekly Market Commentary", provides a quick recap of important banking news, interesting observations, and a preview of the week ahead, along with summaries of interesting articles for further research.

The "Monthly BankBook" covers not only the banking sector in-depth but also rates, credit and other timely financial market topics.

"Industry Primer" reports examine timely topics for bank investors, such as problem credits, the interest rate and net interest margin environment, or M&A outlook.

All clients are provided with unlimited access to Jeff.