Neuberger Berman portfolio manager Steve Eisman still loves financial stocks.
"I haven't been this positive on the banks since the 1990s," Eisman said Wednesday on Bloomberg Television. "We're going to go through for the next several years a massive deregulation of the financial services sector. … From a stock perspective this is very positive for the financial services sector."
Eisman is known for being one of the few investors to profitably bet against subprime mortgage securities during the financial crisis. He was a key character in Michael Lewis' best-selling book "The Big Short" and was depicted by actor Steve Carell in the movie based on the book.
The investor downplayed any concerns over bank leverage or how much a company borrows for its assets versus its equity capital. He cited how Citigroup had 35 to 1 leverage before the financial crisis, compared with just 10 to 1 today.
"I think three, four years from now [Citigroup] will be levered 13 [or] 14 to 1," he said. "I don't see systemic risk these days."
In May 2017, Eisman said on CNBC that he was investing in "a whole bunch of banks and investment banks."