Three Things To Watch When JPMorgan, Other Big Banks Report Earnings -- WSJ

By David Benoit

The nation's biggest banks kick off their third-quarter earnings season early Tuesday when JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Wells Fargo all report.

It has been a rough few months for bank stocks, which have taken it on the chin from seemingly every direction. The bond market and inflation concerns dinged expectations for their revenue, rising rates created concerns about their assets and the popularity of Meta's Muse AI bot launched fears that artificial-intelligence could spark a bank run.

The KBW Nasdaq Bank Index is down 8% in the last three months, while the S&P 500 is up more than 3%.

All the while, bankers and analysts say their operations have been pretty stable. "In our view, recent stock weakness has been driven more by fear than fundamentals, setting up a solid earnings season to re-anchor investors on underlying performance," wrote Barclays analyst Jason Goldberg.

Here are three things to watch this week:

1. Interest rates: Banks are mostly expected to benefit from higher rates at this moment, which allow them to charge more on loans. But if rates continue to go higher, they face losses on their bond portfolios and struggle to generate new loans. Higher rates can also reduce their ability to spend on buybacks, which help shares.

2. Investment-banking revenue: Bankers have already warned that they won't match the strong second quarter in their trading divisions. Merger activity and IPOs have also slowed again. Their forecasts on how those businesses were looking in late September and going into the end of the year will be important to investment theses on banks.

3. Expenses: Banks are racing to build out their own AI capabilities. Their biggest fear, by far, is being hacked and the stream of headlines about AI agents going rogue and hacking companies (or solving math problems) raise even more concerns for banks. Investors expect banks to spend billions of dollars more-the question is how much.

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October 12, 2026 15:00 ET (19:00 GMT)