Wall Street’s Trading Desks Endure Worst First Half in a Decade

Bank chiefs bemoan clients sitting ‘on the sidelines’
U.S. results are a bad omen with European firms set to report

U.S. Banks' Net Interest Margins to Improve: SEI Investments

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By Michael J Moore and Elizabeth Rembert

July 18, 2019 at 4:50 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

Bank investors could be forgiven for mistaking executives on recent earnings calls for sports commentators. Their new favorite way to describe trading clients: “on the sidelines.”

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO David Solomon led his analysis for the past two quarters with that phrase, which has caught on with top executives at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley as well. Benchwarming by hedge funds and other investors is taking the blame for global banks’ worst first-half trading revenue in more than a decade.