Wall Street’s trading desks have had a remarkable run. As the biggest US banks report third-quarter earnings this week, the numbers are expected to show the boom finally losing a little altitude — even as 2026 remains on course to be a record year for trading revenue overall.
Analysts expect Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup to post combined markets revenue of roughly $38.9 billion for the three months to September, according to FactSet estimates reported by Financial News. That is still a healthy 17% increase on the $33.4 billion of the same quarter last year — but it is a clear deceleration from the second quarter, when year-on-year trading growth hit 30%.
“The third quarter is no second quarter”
Bank executives have been telegraphing the slowdown for weeks. Morgan Stanley co-president Dan Simkowitz put it plainly at a Barclays conference last month: “I think it’s safe to say, 3Q is no 2Q.” Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan has suggested his bank’s sales and trading revenue will likely be flat, while Citigroup has guided to a mid-single-digit gain in markets and JPMorgan has forecast growth in the high teens.
The proximate cause is calmer markets. The volatility generated by geopolitical shocks — above all the Iran war — and by the rolling debates around artificial intelligence powered extraordinary trading volumes through the first half of the year. As that volatility has ebbed, so has the flow of client business that banks intermediate.
Still a record year in the making
A cooler quarter is not a cold one. Industry-wide trading revenue across global banks is still expected to rise about 16% this year compared with 2025, according to estimates from research firm Crisil Coalition Greenwich — meaning the desks are coming down from a peak, not falling off a cliff. Lending income is also doing quiet work in the background, with net interest income at the big banks expected to grow solidly year on year.
JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup report on 13 October, with Bank of America and Morgan Stanley following on 14 October — the opening act of an earnings season we previewed in our Q3 earnings week preview. For investors, the question is no longer whether the trading boom was real, but how much of it is structural. Bank bosses have argued that markets revenue has become a durable, all-season business. A quarter that is merely very good, rather than spectacular, will be the first real test of that claim.