Catenaa, Saturday, April 11, 2026- Wall Street’s biggest banks are riding into the first quarter earnings season on less certain ground than where they began 2026.
The procession kicks off on Monday with Goldman Sachs reporting, followed by JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo on Tuesday, and Bank of America and Morgan Stanley rounding out the group on Wednesday.
Investors have humbled the stock prices of these major lenders over the past three months after bidding them to record highs late last year.
Worries ranging from a spillover of the private credit world’s shakeout to a raging US-Israeli war with Iran have loomed largest, spurring the Nasdaq KBW Bank Index to its worst first-quarter performance since 2023’s mini banking crisis. That wider banking industry index is up 1% year to date.
Analysts expect quarterly earnings to look solid. Collective profits for these six big lenders are forecast to climb 5% compared to a year ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
These giants are also expected to post year-over-year rises across overall dealmaking and trading fees.
Perhaps, more important than actual results will be what the bosses of major lenders say during earnings calls about their dealmaking outlook, exposure to private debt, and the general health of the US economy amid historically high oil prices.
A year ago, amid implications of a sweeping rollout of the Trump administration’s tariffs, big bank bosses addressed a growing freeze in the deals market and worries of a US recession. Both proved temporary.
Another major concern is negative spillover from the world of private credit. Earlier this year, investors began to worry about the exposure private debt funds hold in loans tied to software companies at risk of disruption from advances in artificial intelligence.
Meanwhile, a growing list of private fund giants, such as Apollo, Blue Owl, BlackRock, Carlyle, Morgan Stanley, and others, have seen a wave of investor redemption requests in recent weeks, with most imposing 5% limits on how much investors can get back on a quarterly basis.
Big banks not only lend to these funds, but they also manage some of their own. Fed Chair Jay Powell, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, and others have played down the systemic implications of the dynamic.
Dimon also addressed private credit concerns in his shareholder letter published earlier this month.
“There are many players who are late to this game, and it should be expected that some credit providers will do a far worse job than others,” Dimon wrote.
