When Goldman Sachs reports third-quarter results on Tuesday morning, the first of the big banks to step forward, the number most likely to move its stock sits a line or two below the headline profit figure. Analysts expect the bank’s equities trading desk to bring in about $5.1 billion, the largest quarterly haul on Wall Street.
Across five of the largest U.S. banks, stock trading revenue is expected to approach $19 billion for the quarter, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Morgan Stanley follows Goldman at roughly $4.9 billion, JPMorgan Chase at about $4.5 billion and Bank of America at around $2.6 billion. It would be another strong showing for a business that has propped up bank earnings for more than a year.
The calm stops there. Fixed-income trading revenue is expected to fall to a year-to-date low, and the deal-making engine that helped the banks earlier in 2026 has cooled. Merger advisory and initial public offerings have slowed from their spring pace. Analysts estimate investment banking fees will rise 15% at JPMorgan and about 8% at Goldman in the quarter, but under 2% at Morgan Stanley, a spread that shows the boom is no longer lifting everyone equally.
That marks a shift from the second quarter, when nearly every bank’s stock trading desk thrived at once. Analysts say the third quarter is more likely to divide winners from laggards as capital markets cool and the conditions that drove a record stretch of trading revenue begin to fade.
For much of the past year the desks rose together on the same currents: an equity rally that kept clients buying, bouts of volatility that kept them hedging, and a steady drumbeat of interest-rate shifts that kept bond traders busy. That is changing. The third quarter’s summer months are normally the slowest stretch of the trading year, and analysts say the numbers will show which desks built enough momentum to hold up when the tide stopped lifting everyone.
A newer worry sits behind the numbers. Banks have spent the year warning about artificial intelligence tools that help corporate clients sweep idle cash into higher-yielding products, a development that could pull deposits off the balance sheets where banks earn their margins. The concern is real, but some analysts say the market may be overstating it.
The deposit worry is the newest item on the list. Corporate treasurers have begun using software that automatically moves excess cash into money-market funds and other higher-yielding vehicles, a shift that could thin the cheap deposits banks use to fund lending. Bank executives have flagged the risk in public remarks, though several analysts counter that the tools mostly move money among bank-affiliated products rather than out of the system.
The divergence the analysts describe is less about whether banks made money, all of them did, than about how much and from where. A bank that leaned on stock trading will look different from one that leaned on bond trading, and the gap between the two is widening just as investors begin to price in a slower end to the year.
For Goldman, the quarter matters for a second reason. The bank has spent years trying to show that its trading franchise can hold up through a downshift in markets, after a stretch when rivals questioned whether its balance-sheet businesses could keep pace with its own ambitions. A $5.1 billion quarter would be an answer of sorts.
Morgan Stanley’s number carries its own weight. The firm has spent the past decade rebalancing toward wealth management and away from the trading risk that used to define it. A quarter near $4.9 billion would show the desk it kept is still pulling its weight, even as the firm tells investors its future lies in managing other people’s money.
The fixed-income slide is the quieter story. Bond desks fed off the volatility of recent years, when shifting interest-rate expectations kept clients trading. With rates steadier and the year winding down, that volatility has drained out, and the desks are expected to post their softest quarter of the year.
The AI question is the wild card. Tools that let companies move idle cash into money-market funds at the press of a button have worried bank executives, who see deposits as the raw material of their business. Some analysts argue the fear is overdone, that the tools shift cash within the system rather than remove it. The banks will get their first hard look at the effect when they report.
Beyond trading, investors will watch net interest income, which is expected to keep rising at a mid-to-high single-digit pace, and credit costs, which remain modest. Neither is likely to rescue a bank that stumbles on the trading line.
For investors, the week will be less about any single number than about the direction. Earnings are expected to keep growing and credit costs remain moderate, but the easy stretch appears to be over. The question the reports will answer is whether the banks can keep the trading desks humming as the conditions that fed them start to cool.
