The S&P 500 is down again on Thursday following the release of unexpectedly hawkish Fed minutes from Wednesday. One sector, however, understandably demonstrated a strong initial surge following the news: big banks.

But with the next potential rate hike still about a month away, what can shareholders of Bank of America Corp BAC, Citigroup Inc C, JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM, Wells Fargo & Co WFC and other financials expect in the weeks ahead?

For starters, bank investors have likely been extremely disappointed by the performance of their stocks following the highly-anticipated first rate hike of the new cycle back in December. Since the official December rate hike announcement, all of the banks mentioned above, as well as the Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund XLF, have significantly lagged the market, falling between 6.0 and 19.0 percent.

Surprisingly, this type of behavior is typical. Banks have a history of mixed results during rate tightening cycles. The Federal Reserve may sometimes be…

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