Investment guru Dick Bove is warning investors to dump any banking stocks they may own now before the bottom drops out.

Bove, chief strategist for Rafferty Holdings’ Hilton Capital Management, told CNBC that he believes that bank profits are poised to plunge amid surging interest rates.

“They don’t have a clue. The market doesn’t have a clue based upon the things that I hear,” Bove recently told CNBC.

“What we’re seeing is the normal thing happen which is as interest rates go up, the value of these financial assets are coming down,” he said. “Investors don’t have a clear picture as to what the value of bank assets are. Bank capital in real terms is eroding,” he said.

“The bank stocks are going to go lower, and if you own some, you better lighten up,” Bove warned.

To be sure, Bloomberg reported that as the biggest U.S. banks report results that analysts estimate will set a new high for profitability this decade, shareholders are wondering: Is this as good as gets, or is Jamie Dimon right that banks are entering a golden age.

“The quarter will be fine,” Susan Katzke, a bank analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG, said in a note to clients. “It’s more about the forward look.”

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. kick off earnings season for U.S. banks on Friday. Lenders are benefiting from interest rate hikes and a healthy economy, while they’ve tamped down expectations for loan growth and their trading businesses.

Banks will try to reverse the recent trend of underperforming the broader stock market and assuage fears that they’re near “peak profitability” in the late stages of the economic cycle, Bernstein’s John McDonald said in a note last week. Here are some things to watch:

While the U.S. economy has taken off, banks’ loan growth hasn’t kept pace. Analysts are anticipating modest loan growth once again in the third quarter -- Keefe Bruyette & Woods Inc.’s Brian Kleinhanzl expects loans will be up 2.4 percent from a year ago.

Rising interest rates are helping lending margins, but they’re also sapping demand for borrowing in areas such as mortgages. Traditional banks are facing increased competition from nonbanks such as insurers and private equity, and the boom in corporate lending after U.S. tax reform is taking longer to appear than some expected.

“It’s taking a while for tax cuts to work their way through the system,” Barclays Plc analyst Jason Goldberg said in an interview.

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