UK banks have had a shocking week – so it’s probably a good time to buy

Lloyds Bank reported a £676m loss this week. And, with all of the UK's high street banks having a terrible time of things, bank stocks are detested right now. So, asks John Stepek, does that make it a good time to buy?

Lloyds bank cash machines © Dinendra Haria/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Lloyds has posted a loss of £676m
(Image credit: © Getty Images)

UK high street banks have had a shocker of a week.

We’ve seen Spain’s Santander, Lloyds Banking Group, and NatWest (the bank formerly known as Royal Bank of Scotland, and still mostly owned by the taxpayer) all line up to report losses and tell us how much worse things are going to get.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.