JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s traders posted their highest-ever quarterly revenue in the first three months of the year, with record stock-trading results boosting the total past the firm’s previous record by almost $2 billion.
The biggest US bank pulled in $11.6 billion in trading revenue in the first quarter, according to a statement Tuesday. That’s up 20% from a year earlier, with both stock traders and their counterparts in fixed income, currencies and commodities beating analysts’ expectations.
Still, JPMorgan lowered its full-year net interest income guidance back to about $103 billion, where it stood before an investor update in February when the bank raised it to $104.5 billion. The firm held its outlook for NII excluding the markets business steady at about $95 billion.
“The U.S. economy remained resilient in the quarter, with consumers still earning and spending and businesses still healthy,” Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said in the statement. “At the same time, there is an increasingly complex set of risks — such as geopolitical tensions and wars, energy price volatility, trade uncertainty, large global fiscal deficits and elevated asset prices.”
Shares of JPMorgan rose 0.1% to $313.76 at 9:42 a.m. in New York, leaving the stock down 2.7% this year.
On a conference call with analysts, Dimon criticized proposed regulatory changes that would force the bank to hold $20 billion more in capital “for no good reason.”
The bank said its required capital would go up about 4% from proposed changes to the Basel III endgame rules, the surcharge for global systemically important banks and the Federal Reserve’s annual stress tests. Other large banks would see a roughly 5% drop in their capital requirements, JPMorgan said.
Also reporting results Tuesday were Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co., with Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley set for Wednesday. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. kicked off earnings season Monday with a stock-trading haul that beat its own record from the final three months of last year.
Wall Street trading desks have been on a hot streak since President Donald Trump won the 2024 election. His policy moves have repeatedly whipsawed markets across equities, rates and commodities, boosting client activity and the money banks make from facilitating those trades.
JPMorgan’s FICC traders earned $7.08 billion in the quarter, their second-best on record. That contrasts with Goldman, which reported a surprise drop in bond-trading revenue, missing estimates by more than $800 million.
Investment-banking fees of $2.88 billion also beat analysts’ expectations. Dealmakers advising on mergers and acquisitions were the standout, notching an 82% jump to $1.27 billion. Equity underwriting also rose more than expected to $472 million, while a 7% drop in debt-underwriting fees came in slightly worse than estimates.
The $1.8 trillion private-credit industry has been a focal point amid mounting concern that redemption requests and fears over the impact of artificial intelligence will weigh on the sector. For banks, that’s translated to investor questions about their lending to the industry. Earlier this year, JPMorgan marked down the value of certain loans that serve as collateral against the bank’s loans to private-credit funds.
In the call with analysts, Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum said JPMorgan has about $50 billion in private-credit exposure.
Dimon wrote in his annual letter to shareholders earlier this month that private credit probably doesn’t present a systemic risk.
“When we have a credit cycle, which will happen one day, losses on all leveraged lending in general will be higher than expected, relative to the environment,” the CEO wrote. “This is because credit standards have been modestly weakening pretty much across the board.”
In terms of credit more broadly, JPMorgan increased the pile of money set aside for potentially soured loans by $191 million in the first quarter, less than analysts expected. That included a net build for the wholesale side, partially offset by a net release in consumer.
NII for the first quarter rose 9% to $25.4 billion, ahead of estimates. Costs, meanwhile, were $26.9 billion in the quarter, higher than expected. JPMorgan said in February that it expects to spend about $105 billion this year, excluding legal expenses, and it reaffirmed that figure Tuesday.
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