Banking Sector Underperforms Stock Market for 20 Years. Bank of America shares, for instance, are down 42 percent since October 1996. Citi shares have fallen 65 percent in that time.

CNBC reports:

After an awful start to 2016, the S&P 500 bank index is at the same level as in the fall of 1996.

Not that it hasn't been a rocky road: The banks doubled over the next 10 years, then crashed amid the financial crisis, before running right back to where they started. And bank investors did enjoy dividends over the years.

But especially compared to an S&P 500 that is up some 170 percent in the same time period, the abject lack of price performance is striking.

Even the Federal Reserve system has been unable to engineer higher bank stocks.