Goldman Posts Wall Street’s Biggest Bond-Trading Jump So Far

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. joined other big U.S. banks in cashing in on continuing pandemic-induced volatility, as the firm’s bond traders posted the biggest jump on Wall Street so far.

Third-quarter revenue from buying and selling stocks and bonds increased 29%, driven by a 49% surge in fixed-income trading and mirroring similar gains reported Tuesday by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. Revenue at each of Goldman’s four divisions rose from a year earlier, pushing earnings per share to a record that was almost twice as high as analysts predicted.

Many investors were expecting Goldman to beat estimates, “but nowhere close to this order of magnitude, with strength coming from both high- and low-quality sources,” Steven Chubak, an analyst at Wolfe Research, wrote in a note. “Whatever your whisper number was, they crushed that too.”