TORONTO (Reuters) - With a few exceptions, the big Canadian banks rolled out impressive third-quarter profits last week and took pains to downplay the impact of current headaches bedeviling global financial markets.

But they're not getting much love from investors.

Only two of the big six chartered banks, Toronto-Dominion Bank and Bank of Nova Scotia, which announced an acquisition in Chile last Friday, have eked out stock price gains year-to-date.

As a group, the banks are lagging the S&P/TSX composite index this year, although their average four percent decline is skewed by National Bank of Canada's 16 percent price slide, courtesy of its involvement in a troubled segment of the commercial paper market.

Despite wild swings, the broader TSX index has managed to gain nearly six percent year to date, including a one percent rise last week.

"I don't recall over the last several years seeing the kind of volatility we've seen in the Canadian banks," said Dom Grestoni, senior vice-president and head of North American equities at I.G. Investment Management in Winnipeg.

Bank stocks began the year well, hit all-time highs in the spring, then started to slide as 10-year Canadian bond rates started to rise, Grestoni noted. When interest rates fell back in June and July, emerging jitters about US subprime mortgages, asset backed commercial paper and credit markets in general took over and kept the heat on the banks.

Only since mid-August have the stocks staged a mild recovery, after most of them assured investors that they had little money tied up in subprime mortgages or other problem areas.

"From a fundamental point of view, you've got the group reporting RoEs (return on equity) at the high end, if not at record levels, and there seems to be no sign of that abating any time soon," said Grestoni, who manages the C$13.5 billion Investors Dividend fund.

But perception driven by fear seems to have the upper hand over fundamentals, he added.