Betting Against Banks With FAZ? You’re Actually Shorting Insurers and Brokers
Traders reaching for FAZ to short banks after the latest Fed hike may be paying for exposure to insurers and payment networks instead, and the math gets stranger from there.
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
The Federal Reserve raised its policy rate range on September 17, 2026, lifting the upper bound to 4% from 3.75%, and traders positioned for a bank selloff turned to leveraged inverse products for a quick payoff. The obvious vehicle was Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares (NYSEARCA:FAZ), which climbed 5% over the past week and 11% over the past month as long yields pressed higher. Those moves look like validation of a bank-bearish thesis.
FAZ seeks three times the inverse daily return of the Russell 1000 Financial Services Index, where banks make up only about 28% of the weight. The remaining roughly two-thirds sits in insurance, capital markets, consumer finance, payments, and diversified holding companies whose earnings do not follow bank funding costs. That gap between what buyers think they own and what the index actually contains matters before you use FAZ as your rate-hike trade.
Only Part of the Benchmark Actually Behaves Like a Bank
A leveraged short on financials is only a bank short if banks dominate the index. In this benchmark, they do not. Insurers benefit from higher reinvestment yields, and Berkshire Hathaway alone carries a slightly larger index weight than JPMorgan Chase.
The Financial Select Sector SPDR (NYSEARCA:XLF), a sector proxy, is up 3% year to date. That modest gain underscores how the broader financials complex has held up even as bank-specific pressures have built.
Bank stocks themselves have done better. The SPDR S&P Bank ETF (NYSEARCA:KBE) is up 11% year to date. If the rate-hike script called for banks to break, they have not yet followed it.
The Full Index Can Rise While Banks Fall
Because banks are a minority of the benchmark, an insurance rally or a strong quarter from payment networks can offset bank weakness inside the same index. FAZ measures the full basket across insurance, capital markets, consumer finance and payments.
Banks slipped 6% over the past month, but XLF fell only 3% because non-bank financials cushioned the move. A trader convinced banks would drop after the hike was right about direction and still received a smaller inverse payoff than a pure bank short would have delivered.
Long-term yields amplify that split. The 10-year Treasury reached 5.01%, a level that helps insurers and brokers even when it squeezes bank borrowers.
Daily Reset Turns a Correct Call into a Losing Trade
Even when the bank thesis works, FAZ compounds each day at three times inverse. Choppy sessions quietly erode principal, especially during index recoveries.
FAZ is down 83% over five years, while XLF is up 62% over five years. That is what daily-reset leverage does to a portfolio held longer than the marketing intends.
Year to date, FAZ is down 8% even though the Fed has been in a hiking posture for parts of that stretch. The mismatch between benchmark composition and trader intent is doing exactly the work you would expect.
The Bull and Bear Case for FAZ ETF
The bull case is narrow and tactical. If bank earnings warnings arrive alongside a credit event, the whole Russell 1000 Financial Services Index can move together, and three times inverse daily exposure produces outsized gains. The recent 11% monthly move shows what a coordinated financial selloff pays when you are on the right side for a few days.
The bear case is structural. FAZ delivers inverse exposure to a diversified financials index that is mostly non-bank, so hedgers get a diluted payoff even when their thesis is directionally correct. Add daily-reset decay, and the fund shrinks to a short-horizon trading instrument.
The deciding variable is holding period. Used inside a single session with a defined exit, FAZ can hedge a bank-specific event. Held across the weeks it takes a rate hike to work through earnings, the compounding math and the index’s non-bank weight usually win.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Omor Ibne Ehsan is a writer at 24/7 Wall St. He is a self-taught investor with a focus on growth, cyclical, and dividend equities that have strong fundamentals, value, and long-term potential. He also has an interest in high-risk, high-reward investments such as penny stocks.
