, Columnist
Goldman Makes Case for Volcker Rule
Making large speculative bets can backfire.
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Debt-trading revenues tend to be volatile. That's normal. But something was abnormal about how disappointing Goldman Sachs's fixed-income trading results were in the first three months of 2017.
Goldman is typically a powerhouse in this lucrative business, and yet the New York bank was the only one of its peers to miss analysts' debt-trading estimates for the quarter. The firm's explanation that credit trading in particular was weak made little sense because volumes set records, and other banks cited that area as notably strong.