Bank of America's traders are not having the best year
The big American investment banks have all posted their results for Q3. They were positive, with revenue up across the board, but that doesn’t mean that everyone really did well.
Bank of America, which published results today, is one of the banks that had more of a mixed bag of results. Its Q3 fixed income, currencies, and commodities (FICC) revenue was just 5% above the figure from Q3 of last year – a performance worse than any of its peers.
BofA's equities revenue in the third quarter were 14% higher than Q3 of last year, a performance that was also worse than any of its peers bar Goldman Sachs.
Across the whole of the first nine months of this year, BofA's equities trading revenues were up just 14% in the first nine months of the year, compared to highs of 34% and 32% at Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan, respectively. And revenues for BofA’s FICC traders were up just 10%, compared to 14% and 13% at JPMorgan and Citi, respectively.
The FICC results might bite particularly hard for BofA. We noted that the firm’s macro traders were “on fire” after Q2, but that sales & trading “performed poorly” in Q1. The bank’s president of global markets, Jim De Mare, did say in February that he expected 2025 to not be the best year for traders. None of his rivals seem to have heard him, however.
If BofA’s traders aren’t having a great time, some of its investment bankers are having a much worse one. In the first nine months of the year, the firm’s equity capital markets revenue was 6% below the same point in 2024. It was the only one of its peers to report a loss in an investment banking breakdown.
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