On July 14, 2026, five of America’s biggest banks—JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo—reported their second-quarter earnings. The combined profits hit $49 billion. That is a 39% jump from the same quarter last year. Morgan Stanley and BlackRock followed on July 15.
These are not normal numbers. These are “we just lived through a historic quarter” numbers.
JPMorgan posted $21.2 billion in net income—the highest quarterly profit in the bank’s history. Goldman Sachs delivered $6.63 billion in profit, up 78% from a year earlier, also a record. Bank of America earned $9.1 billion, up 27%. Citigroup’s profit jumped 45%.
The headline everyone is talking about: global investment banking fees reached $61.4 billion in the first half of 2026, up 24% from a year earlier. That is not a typo. $61.4 billion.
Wall Street’s top five banks are projected to earn $11.1 billion in investment banking fees in Q2 alone—a 27% year-over-year increase and the highest level since 2021.
Comparison Table 1: Q2 2026 Earnings Scorecard — The Big Five Banks
| Bank | EPS (vs. Estimate) | Net Income | Revenue (YoY) | IB Fees Growth | Trading Revenue Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JPMorgan | $6.14 adjusted (est. $5.85) | $16.9B adjusted / $21.2B reported | $58.0B (+27%) | +30% to $3.3B | Markets +35% to $12.1B; Equities +86% |
| Goldman Sachs | $20.98 (est. ~$14.50) | $6.63B | $20.34B (+39%) | +55% to $3.40B | Equities +72% to $7.42B; FICC +32% to $4.59B |
| Bank of America | $1.21 (est. $1.13) | $9.1B (+27%) | $31.6B (+15%) | +50% to ~$2.1B | Sales & trading +33% to $7.16B |
| Citigroup | $3.15 (est. $2.74) | $5.8B (+45%) | $24.8B (best in a decade) | +44% to $1.55B | Equity trading +45% |
| Wells Fargo | $2.00 | $6.4B | $22.6B | Minor IB player | Benefited from same tailwinds |
July 14: The Day Five Banks Beat Every Estimate
Start with the scale of it. JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo together hold more than $13 trillion in combined assets. All five posted results ahead of Wall Street forecasts on the same morning. That almost never happens across an entire sector at once.
Combined, those five banks cleared roughly $49 billion in quarterly profit. That’s up 39% from a year earlier. Multiple outlets called it one of the strongest single days for the sector in recent memory.
Three of those five stories carry the most weight for this piece: JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs. Let’s go through each.
JPMorgan: Every Business Line Hit a Record
JPMorgan posted the highest quarterly profit in its history. Net income landed at $21.2 billion, or $7.70 per share.
That figure includes a one-time $4.6 billion gain tied to Visa shares, plus another $1.0 billion from equity investment gains. Strip those out, and adjusted net income comes to $16.9 billion, or $6.14 per share. Analysts had expected $5.85. Either way, it was a wide beat.
Revenue climbed 27% year-over-year to $58.0 billion on a managed basis. CEO Jamie Dimon said every major business line posted record revenue this quarter, which almost never happens across the board at once.
The investment banking number matters most here. JPMorgan’s IB fees rose 30% to $3.3 billion, the highest level since 2021. Equity underwriting led that surge, helped by JPMorgan’s role as a joint underwriter on SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO.
Trading told a similar story. Markets revenue jumped 35% to $12.1 billion. Equities trading alone surged 86% to $6.0 billion. That’s not a typo. Almost double, in a single quarter.
JPMorgan also raised its full-year net interest income outlook to roughly $105.5 billion, up from $103 billion three months earlier. It bumped its expense forecast too, to $107.5 billion from $105 billion. That expense hike spooked some investors. Shares dropped more than 2% in premarket trading, even after the blowout quarter.
Bank of America: 17 Straight Quarters of Trading Growth
Bank of America doesn’t always grab the same headlines as JPMorgan or Goldman. This quarter, it earned them.
Earnings came in at $1.21 per share, up 34% year-over-year and well above the $1.13 estimate. Net income rose 27% to $9.1 billion. Revenue climbed 15% to $31.6 billion.
CEO Brian Moynihan pointed to trading, investment banking, and wealth management as the main growth drivers. Sales and trading revenue reached $7.16 billion, up 33%. That marked the bank’s 17th straight quarter of year-over-year trading growth. Seventeen quarters is more than four years without a single down quarter in trading.
Investment banking fees rose 50% to roughly $2.1 billion. Within that, equity underwriting income climbed close to 69%, and advisory fees, the money banks earn guiding mergers, jumped nearly 78%.
Moynihan told analysts the deal pipeline still looks solid heading into the back half of the year. He added that corporate borrowing has picked back up too.
Goldman Sachs: The Biggest Beat of the Day
If JPMorgan set the tone and Bank of America confirmed it, Goldman Sachs blew past everyone.
Net revenue hit $20.34 billion, up 39% year-over-year. Analysts had expected somewhere between $16.1 billion and $16.5 billion. Earnings per share landed at $20.98, crushing the roughly $14.50 consensus by more than 44%.
Goldman’s Global Banking & Markets division, essentially its trading and dealmaking engine, generated $15.52 billion, up 53%. Equities revenue within that jumped 72% to $7.42 billion. Fixed income rose 32% to $4.59 billion.
Investment banking fees climbed 55% to $3.40 billion. Equity underwriting alone surged 130%. Debt underwriting rose 75%.
CEO David Solomon told analysts that momentum had picked up across every part of the business. He said clients keep turning to Goldman for their biggest, most consequential deals. Large-company M&A volumes rose 90% globally in the first half of 2026, he added. Goldman alone advised on $1.2 trillion of announced transactions, giving it roughly a $425 billion lead over its nearest competitor.
Here’s the detail that matters most for the sustainability question. Goldman’s investment banking backlog, the pipeline of deals not yet closed, climbed to its highest level in five years. That’s a forward-looking signal, not just a look back at the last three months.
Where the $61.4 Billion Number Actually Comes From
The headline figure driving this whole story isn’t from any single bank. It’s an industry-wide tally from Dealogic, tracking global investment banking revenue across every major firm.
That revenue hit $61.4 billion for the first half of 2026, up 24% from the same period a year ago. JPMorgan held its position as the world’s top investment bank by revenue. Goldman Sachs led the global M&A advisory rankings.
Some context helps here. Full-year global investment banking revenue hit a record $132 billion back in 2021, the last true boom year. Hitting $61.4 billion in just six months puts 2026 on pace to challenge that record, assuming the momentum holds through year-end.
What’s Actually Fueling This Rally
Three forces are doing most of the work, and they’re worth separating out.
The SpaceX IPO.
On June 12, 2026, SpaceX went public, raising $86 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation. It’s the largest IPO in history. Goldman Sachs led the deal, with JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citigroup serving as co-underwriters. Banks collectively earned around $500 million in fees just from underwriting, before counting debt issuance for the newly public company or future wealth management business from its newly minted millionaires.
The AI capital spending supercycle.
JPMorgan’s CFO Jeremy Barnum told reporters that AI now touches nearly every corner of financial markets, from IPOs to trading flows to index rebalancing. Big tech’s data center buildout is generating financing deals, debt issuance, and advisory mandates across the sector. Solomon at Goldman described the AI investment cycle as multi-year and still in its early stages.
Market volatility out of the Middle East.
Renewed conflict involving the U.S., Israel, and Iran, plus disruptions near the Strait of Hormuz, sent oil prices swinging through the quarter. That kind of volatility is exactly what trading desks feed on. It’s painful for the broader economy and lucrative for banks with big markets divisions.
Trading Desks Had Their Best Quarter in Years
The investment banking fee number grabs the headlines. Trading revenue is arguably the bigger story.
Across JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs, equities trading revenue posted gains between 69% and 86% year-over-year. A synchronized jump like that across three separate firms rarely happens by accident.
KBW analyst Chris McGratty flagged something worth noting here. Banks are managing volatility far better than they did before the 2008 financial crisis, when trading desks would occasionally blow up spectacularly. This time, heightened volatility is translating into consistent, well-managed profit instead of periodic disaster.
Citi and Wells Fargo Round Out the Picture
Citigroup posted its best quarterly revenue in a decade, at $24.8 billion, with EPS of $3.15 against a $2.74 estimate. Equity trading revenue climbed 45%. Investment banking revenue rose 44% to $1.55 billion. Citi also announced a $30 billion buyback alongside a 12% dividend increase.
Wells Fargo reported net income of $6.4 billion, or $2.00 per share, on revenue of $22.6 billion. It’s a smaller investment banking player than the other four, but it still rode the same trading tailwinds.
Morgan Stanley and BlackRock: Still to Come
Morgan Stanley and BlackRock both report before the market opens on July 15, a day after the other five. As of this writing, both results were still pending release.
Analysts expected Morgan Stanley to post EPS somewhere between $2.81 and $2.95, with revenue near $19.3 to $19.6 billion. Given how JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Goldman performed a day earlier, the bar sits high. Morgan Stanley’s bankers were lead underwriters on the SpaceX IPO too, so the firm should share directly in that fee bonanza.
BlackRock isn’t a trading bank at all. It’s the world’s largest asset manager, sitting on $13.9 trillion in assets under management as of March 2026. Analysts expected EPS near $12.59 to $12.65, on revenue around $6.7 to $6.8 billion. Watch its net flow numbers and its Aladdin technology commentary for clues on where institutional money is heading next.
Haven’t We Seen This Movie Before?
Anyone who’s followed markets for a while should feel a flicker of déjà vu here. 2021 also delivered a record investment banking boom, at $132 billion for the full year.
Then 2022 happened. Rising interest rates, the war in Ukraine, and a stock market selloff gutted dealmaking almost overnight. Global investment banking revenue fell nearly 38% in the first half of that year, down to $35.6 billion from $57.4 billion. IPOs dried up. SPACs collapsed. Layoffs followed across the industry.
So the obvious question: is 2026 just 2021 wearing a new outfit?
There’s a real difference this time, and it deserves attention. The 2021 boom ran on ultra-low interest rates and pandemic-era stimulus. Money was essentially free, and that fueled a lot of speculative excess. This year’s rally is happening despite elevated rates, while the Fed actively debates whether to hike again before year-end.
That’s a structurally different setup. Deal activity holding up against a tighter monetary backdrop points to genuine corporate demand, not just cheap-money froth. Goldman’s five-year-high backlog supports that reading. So does the IPO market, which has raised over $251 billion through late June, already ahead of the 2021 pace.
Comparison Table 2: Investment Banking Boom — 2021 vs. 2026
| Factor | 2021 Boom | 2026 Boom |
|---|---|---|
| Interest rate backdrop | Near-zero rates, pandemic-era stimulus | Elevated rates; Fed debating a possible hike |
| IB revenue | $132B (full-year record) | $61.4B (H1 2026, +24% YoY) |
| Primary driver | Cheap money, SPAC mania, retail trading frenzy | AI capex supercycle, mega-IPOs (SpaceX), M&A rebound |
| Deal backlog signal | Peaked, then reversed sharply | Goldman’s backlog at a five-year high, still climbing |
| What happened next | H1 2022 revenue fell 38% to $35.6B | Still unfolding; H2 2026 outlook cautiously positive |
The Risks Nobody’s Pricing In Yet
None of this guarantees smooth sailing from here. A few real risks deserve your attention.
Fed policy is genuinely uncertain.
New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh has struck a notably hawkish tone since taking office. Oil price spikes tied to the Iran conflict pushed rate-hike odds for later this year meaningfully higher, even after a cooler-than-expected June inflation report briefly calmed markets. A surprise hike could cool the exact volatility that’s been fueling trading revenue.
Expenses are climbing too.
JPMorgan has raised its expense guidance twice this year already, most recently to $107.5 billion. Rising compensation costs can quietly eat into the profit growth investors are cheering right now.
Some of this quarter’s profit was one-off.
JPMorgan’s headline $21.2 billion figure includes that one-time $4.6 billion Visa-related gain. Strip it out, and growth still looks strong, just noticeably less dramatic.
Dimon himself sounded a note of caution.
Despite the record quarter, he flagged geopolitical instability, persistent inflation, growing sovereign debt, and stretched asset valuations as risks building beneath the surface.
Is This Sustainable? My Honest Read
I don’t think this is a repeat of 2021’s sugar high. I also don’t expect every bank to keep growing IB fees by 30% to 55% forever.
The backlog data makes the strongest case for durability. Goldman’s five-year-high pipeline, JPMorgan’s record NII guidance, and an IPO market running ahead of 2021’s pace all point toward broad-based deal demand. The AI infrastructure buildout looks like it’s creating real financing need across chips, data centers, and power, not just hype-driven speculation.
The counterargument is just as real. A meaningful chunk of this quarter’s strength traces back to one enormous, unrepeatable event: the SpaceX IPO. Trading gains this large, tied to geopolitical volatility, can reverse just as fast as they appeared if the Middle East situation cools down.
My honest take: expect growth to moderate from these exact percentages, not collapse. The second half of 2026 likely brings solid, if less spectacular, numbers. That assumes the Fed avoids a surprise hike and the Iran situation doesn’t escalate further.
What This Means If You Hold Bank Stocks
If you’re holding financial sector positions, this earnings season is a genuinely good sign. It isn’t a blank check for complacency, though.
Watch three things closely through the rest of 2026: the Fed’s July 28-29 meeting, deal-pipeline commentary on upcoming earnings calls, and whether expense growth starts outpacing revenue growth at any of these banks.
Bank stocks have already had a strong run into this earnings season. JPMorgan, Goldman, and Bank of America shares all reacted positively around results, even with JPMorgan dipping briefly on its expense guidance. Valuations aren’t as cheap as they were a year ago, which raises the bar for continued outperformance from here.
Disclaimer
This article is for informational purposes only and isn’t investment advice. I’m not a SEBI-registered advisor or a licensed financial planner. Bank stocks and the earnings figures above can change with restatements or revised guidance, so verify current numbers against official filings before making any decisions. Do your own research and size any position to your own risk tolerance.
Frequently Asked Questions
Global investment banking revenue hit $61.4 billion in the first half of 2026, up 24% year-over-year, according to Dealogic data. Three forces drove it: the record-breaking SpaceX IPO in June, an AI-driven capital spending boom generating financing and advisory work, and heightened trading volatility tied to conflict in the Middle East. JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs all posted their strongest quarters in years as a result.
Goldman Sachs delivered the biggest beat, posting EPS of $20.98 against a roughly $14.50 estimate. JPMorgan reported the highest quarterly profit in its history at $21.2 billion. Bank of America logged its 17th consecutive quarter of trading revenue growth. Citigroup posted its best quarterly revenue in a decade at $24.8 billion.
Likely yes in the near term, though the pace of growth should moderate from these exact percentages. Goldman’s investment banking backlog sits at a five-year high, and 2026 IPO issuance already runs ahead of 2021’s pace. Unlike 2021, this rally is unfolding despite elevated interest rates rather than near-zero ones, which points to more durable, deal-driven demand rather than pure cheap-money froth.
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