Wall Street’s biggest banks reaped almost $37bn in trading revenues in the first quarter of the year — their best performance in more than a decade — as Donald Trump’s administration unleashed a barrage of market-moving announcements.
The combined performance by JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup marks a return to favour for a business that until 2020 had been a shadow of its pre-financial crisis form.
Trump’s second term as US president has ushered in a period of economic and policy uncertainty, particularly around tariffs, that has led to wild stock market gyrations and created opportunities for traders to exploit market moves.