Banks are back in the news -- in a good way. Speculation is that mergers and acquisitions will be picking up, so are profits. Some are looking to raise their dividend and/or buy back more shares. Bank of America (BAC) is one of them.

The CEO, Brian Moynihan, announced that B of A wasn't looking to buy other banks. Instead, the bank would be focused on returning more capital to shareholders in the form of a regular dividend (now 4 cents a year), share buybacks and special cash dividends. The reason: he feels the bank will earn between $35 billion and $40 billion a year (yes, billion ... a year) in pretax earnings when the business normalizes. (But there's the catch: when does business get to normal?)

Huntington Bancshares (HBAN) was down 2% to $6.86 as of this writing. Earlier today, the company reported results for the fourth quarter. Should we be interested in the stock?

According to Bloomberg, net income came in at 5 cents per share. Talk about a change in fortune: last year at this time, a loss of 56 cents per share had been booked. Unfortunately, Wall Street was hoping for 8 cents per share. It should be noted, though, that the profit stat was negatively affected by 7 cents per share because management made a repayment to the United States government for use of monies involved in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (otherwise known as the famous TARP initiative).

It was a tough day for bank stocks today, and tomorrow Capital One Financial Corp. (COF) will get its chance to impress Wall Street when it reports its fourth quarter results.

The market was disappointed today by weak earnings report from Goldman Sachs and by news of job cuts coming from American Express.

Investors searching for opportunities will be hard pressed to find stocks that are still undervalued. It seems like this rally has pushed every sector to very high levels. Perhaps, it may be time to look in more off-the-cuff places for investment ideas.

One possibility trades on the Amsterdam-based exchange, the Euronext. The Dutch insurer, Delta Lloyd Group, which has operations in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium, is a profitable company with a favorable balance sheet that trades at a significant discount to its book value. In the first half of 2010, it generated €767 million of income after taxes and non-controlling interests, a 263% increase. At the same time, it has €3,903 billion in tangible assets net of all liabilities, but a market cap of just € 2,810 billion as of January 11. In other words, investing in Delta Lloyd is like buying assets, with all liabilities paid off, at a 30% discount.

Banks were sick for a while. Some of them died (41 in the third quarter alone, a total of 127 so far this year), quickly taken over by the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.), transferring their ticket to ride to another institution that changed the name on the front door (but kept the FDIC sticker) over a weekend. More will evaporate. There are currently 860 on the FDIC's list of problem institutions as of September 30. That compares to 829 at the end of June. But the latest bank profits suggest the worst is over for the banking sector.

Shares of financial giant American Express (AXP) are trading lower in after hours trading despite a stronger than expected earnings report for its third quarter.

Going into this afternoon's earnings report, analysts had been expecting to see American Express announce earnings of $0.86 per share, while actual earnings came in above estimates at $0.90 per share.

The financial sector has been a strange double-edged sword in portfolios over the past two years or so. In the wake of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, billions of wealth was erased in what were long thought of as conservative stocks. Then the resurgence of some banks since the lows of last year made other investors a fortune, with Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC) both soaring about 300% since historic lows on March 9, 2009.

The drama continues in the financial sector even now with the endless see-saw of mortgage default news and the continued worries over sovereign debt in the eurozone. Any investor jumping into financial stocks right now is really taking the tiger by the tail -- but if you do your homework, there a number of opportunities in the sector become clear -- particularly among financials in Latin America.