The increases among the banks didn't eclipse yesterday's declines. All of the four lenders are down more than 15 percent this month.

"People are responding to a huge amount of uncertainty around the economic outlook," said Richard Staite, an analyst at Atlantic Equities LP. "It is expected that investors would look to sell the banks as being one of the most impacted sectors from that."

Credit-default swaps on Bank of America added 26 basis points to 304 basis points yesterday in New York, according to data provider CMA. Contracts on Wells Fargo & Co. increased 2.7 basis points to 117, the data show. Contracts on New York-based Goldman Sachs and Citigroup climbed to 195 basis points and 194 basis points, respectively.

Bank Capital

U.S. banks' Tier 1 common capital ratios, a measure of financial strength, have almost doubled since 2008 to an average 10 percent at the end of June, analysts at Goldman Sachs led by Richard Ramsden said in a report this week. Liquid assets make up 35 percent of holdings at Bank of America, JPMorgan and Citigroup, compared with 27 percent in 2007, according to the report.

"The teams that are managing liquidity at these firms have seen the abyss and have peered down into it recently," said David Knutson, a credit analyst at Legal & General Investment Management. "Those memories are fresh in these management teams' minds and I think that's why the risk is low."

Concerns about banks' capital and liquidity are less pronounced than in 2008, Charles Peabody, an analyst at Portales Partners LLC, said in a Bloomberg Radio interview.

Revenue Recovery

"The problem is, when are we going to see any kind of revenue improvement?" Peabody said. "Given the flatness of the yield curve, margin assumptions are going to be cut again, and given the uncertainties in the economy, loan demand assumptions and the capital markets assumptions are going to be pared back. So, you've pushed out any kind of revenue recovery until the first quarter of next year."

Morgan Stanley, which borrowed more than $100 billion from the Federal Reserve in September 2008 after hedge-fund clients pulled funds from the firm's prime brokerage unit, hasn't seen similar prime-brokerage withdrawals this month, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Brad Hintz said in a note yesterday. Lenders haven't reduced credit lines to the firm, Hintz wrote.