The Fed said Dec. 18 that it will reduce its monthly bond purchases to $75 billion from $85 billion, reflecting an improved economic outlook. The nation’s jobless rate fell to a five-year low of 7 percent in November, and gross domestic product expanded at a 4.1 percent annualized rate in the third quarter, the fastest since 2011. On the day of the Fed’s announcement, the KBW Bank Index rose the most in 40 days.

Short-term rates, which the Fed has held to 0.25 percent since 2008, may not rise until 2015, according to 15 of 17 Federal Open Market Committee participant forecasts. After that happens, net interest margins, or the difference between what a bank pays on deposits and gets for loans, could expand and boost income.

“I call it the eventual trade,” said Oppenheimer’s McEvoy, who is based in Portland, Maine. “Eventually we all know the short end of the yield curve will go up, and that will drive an improvement in bank profitability and support higher stock prices.”

If forecasts change to signal that Fed rates will rise sooner, that could boost bank stocks in 2014, McEvoy said.

The Fed’s decision to taper its bond buying bodes well for banks because an improving economy could spur more confidence among consumers and businesses to borrow, Gerard Cassidy, an RBC Capital Markets analyst also based in Portland, said in a phone interview. Annual GDP is forecast to rise to 2.6 percent in 2014, according to a Bloomberg survey.

“We anticipate stronger loan growth in 2014 versus ’13, driven by the economy,” Cassidy said.

Investors could turn to JPMorgan and Bank of America Corp. shares to take advantage of a stronger U.S. economy, Keith Horowitz, a Citigroup Inc. analyst, said today in a note to clients. Shareholders are also showing confidence that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley will push returns above their cost of capital, “even though it will take several years to get there,” he wrote.

Share Forecasts

That rosy forecast isn’t shared by all analysts. Some say financial firms’ stock prices don’t have much room to run.

“Valuations have reached more normalized levels for most groups, and we are not expecting a repeat of the 2013 performance,” Bank of America analysts including Erika Najarian wrote in a Dec. 16 note to investors.