Bank earnings season is here once again.
Third-quarter results begin rolling out on Tuesday of this week, with JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and BlackRock all set to report before the market opens. Together, those five firms represent around $1.5 trillion in market value, or the core of the publicly traded U.S. financial sector.
The deluge will continue through mid-week, with Bank of America and Morgan Stanley headlining on Wednesday. Thursday’s slate is heavy, too, including Charles Schwab and AI bellwether (thus overall market bellwether) Taiwan Semiconductor.
Friday brings American Express, plus smaller players including Truist and State Street. In all, [mor…
Bank earnings season is here once again.
Third-quarter results begin rolling out on Tuesday of this week, with JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and BlackRock all set to report before the market opens. Together, those five firms represent around $1.5 trillion in market value, or the core of the publicly traded U.S. financial sector.
The deluge will continue through mid-week, with Bank of America and Morgan Stanley headlining on Wednesday. Thursday’s slate is heavy, too, including Charles Schwab and AI bellwether (thus overall market bellwether) Taiwan Semiconductor.
Friday brings American Express, plus smaller players including Truist and State Street. In all, more than 100 companies will post results between Monday and Friday — many of them banks or financials.
Whispering to Washington
Bank earnings season has steadily become an elaborate dance between Wall Street and Washington. Each quarter, CEOs Jamie Dimon, Larry Fink, David Solomon, and Jane Fraser use their earnings calls and related interviews to speak between the lines, signaling what the sector will and won’t countenance without quite saying it outright. Their commentary subtly shapes politicians and policymakers’ next moves — and vice versa — in a kind of coded, reflexive feedback loop that’s becoming a spectacle onto itself.
The ritual takes on extra significance this week because it’s arriving in the middle of a government shutdown, when both officials and investors are likely to be especially attuned to how finance’s most powerful people are reading the economy.
Profiting from chaos
Bank profits, perky as of the last quarter, are expected to stay strong in the third quarter, continuing a banner year for the sector. The KBW Nasdaq Bank Index is up over 12% year to date, driven higher by trading and deal-making as Wall Street feasts on volatility. Trade wars and tariff chaos, growing rate-cut expectations and wild policy signals from the White House have all kept markets churning — a dream setup for trading desks at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Citi. Even as margins begin to flatten with rate cuts via the Federal Reserve, banks are likely to keep reaping record fees and trading revenues.
Explicitly merging interests
The relationship between Wall Street and Washington is becoming more explicit in other ways, too.
JPMorgan’s new $10 billion “Security and Resiliency Initiative” formalizes what’s already underway: banks moving in step with government priorities. The plan channels private capital into defense, AI, energy tech, and advanced manufacturing, sectors deemed key to national security. In other words, the U.S. finance sector is increasingly positioning itself not just beside the state, but more or less within it.