Financial companies make money two very different ways. One is charging for activity, meaning trades, card swipes, and deals. The other is earning interest on loans and customer cash, and the latest round of results shows the first engine pulling far ahead.
Trading desks carried the quarter
Equities desks at the biggest US banks delivered the standout numbers in the third quarter of 2026. Goldman Sachs took in $6.44B from stock trading, 72% more than a year earlier, while its fixed income, currencies, and commodities line was flat at $3.47B.
JPMorganChase grew equities trading 49% to $5.0B as its fixed income trading slipped 4%. Morgan Stanley posted a 41% equities gain to $5.8B with fixed income down 7%.
Equities Trading Revenue Growth, Q3 2026
Year-over-year growth in equities trading revenue by major bank.
Bar chart. YoY Growth (%). Goldman Sachs: YoY Growth (%) 72%. JPMorganChase: YoY Growth (%) 49%. Morgan Stanley: YoY Growth (%) 41%. Citi: YoY Growth (%) 14%. Bank of America: YoY Growth (%) 11%.
Citigroup and Bank of America grew equities more modestly at 14% and 11%, and Bank of America's bond desk revenue fell 17%. Across five of the largest lenders, equities divisions pulled in almost $67B over the first nine months of the year, roughly $5B more than the bond, currency, and commodity units.
Wells Fargo's bank analyst Mike Mayo called it a multiyear divergence of equities versus fixed income, and said 2026 is likely the first year since 2008 that equities out-earns fixed income.
Payments volume keeps compounding
Visa gets paid on the number and size of transactions crossing its network, which makes it a direct read on spending. Fiscal fourth-quarter net revenue rose 13% to $12.1B, with cross-border volume up 14% and processed transactions up 10% to 74.2B.
Full-year net revenue climbed 15% to $45.9B, and the board lifted the quarterly dividend 16% to $0.78 per share. Spending data from the banks lines up, with card spend growing 8% to 13% year over year at the four largest consumer franchises.
Interest income is the soft spot
Robinhood shows the split cleanly inside one income statement. Transaction-based revenue rose 19% to roughly $867M in the third quarter, while net interest revenue fell 9% to $415M.
Options revenue climbed 31% to $399M and equities revenue rose 41% to $121M. Event contracts, which let customers trade on outcomes like elections or economic data, grew more than sixfold to $173M as crypto revenue dropped 55% to $120M.
Transaction Revenue Mix: Options Dominating Trading Activity
Q3 2026 transaction-based revenue breakdown ($M)
Pie chart. Options: Revenue ($M) $399. Event Contracts: Revenue ($M) $173. Equities: Revenue ($M) $121. Crypto: Revenue ($M) $120.
Funded customers reached 28.7M and platform assets rose 19% to $396B. Lending-heavy results looked duller, with Wells Fargo revenue up 2% to $21.87B and its credit loss provision climbing to $1.03B from $681M a year earlier.
SoFi splits the difference and leans into fees. Adjusted net revenue rose 44% to a record $1.4B, and fee-based revenue of roughly $570.6M made up 42% of total revenue.
How to position the exposure
The cleaner trade sits with the fee and activity engines, meaning payments networks, brokers, and investment banks with large trading operations. Those revenue lines grew at double-digit and triple-digit rates this quarter while interest-driven lines grew slowly or shrank.
Pure lenders face a tougher setup. Deposit costs rose at all four major banks after a September Fed hike, and deposit growth slowed sequentially, squeezing the gap that funds their earnings.
The main risk is that trading volume is cyclical. Bloomberg Intelligence's head of market structure research Larry Tabb pointed to event-driven positioning behind the surge, and Mayo warned that persistently higher yields could raise financing costs and delay deals.
Visa's fee stream tracks consumer and business spending, Robinhood's tracks retail trading, and the investment banks capture institutional flow. Exposure spread across the three depends less on any single volume cycle holding up.
