Don't forget the dividend
Fan,
I agree with you that the interest in banks is probably helping the price, but check the daily volumes the last 4 months or so. Check the daily volume and it almost appears that someone is jumping into the market every few days and creating a lot more volume than normal. For instance today's volume was something like 65% above the 30 day average volume. When you have this kind of increase in volume it would tend to push the price up just because of the extra demand.
Thanks,
Jim