The Institutional Risk Analyst

GS had a remarkable year in 2025, as shown in the table below. It is good to see the firm back on track after the disastrous experiment in retail banking and credit cards.  This is really one of the few pages in the GS public disclosure that has any useful information, which is a major reason that the Fed's Y-9C is must reading for analysts of Goldman Sachs.

President Donald Trump, Bill Pulte and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have apparently met a couple of times in recent weeks to consider policy initiatives for spurring housing. Meanwhile, the GSEs have begun to buy and/or retain mortgage assets in an effort to push down mortgage rates, an effort that is unlikely to have much effect.

But more to the point, the comingled worlds of private equity and credit may be the biggest scandal to hit Wall Street in a century. Most bank loans to PE sponsors "secured" by private company assets are actually non-recourse, so there is no recovery for the bank in the event of default. We think these factors are just some of the reasons that exposures to private equity and credit may be the most risky part of bank loan portfolios.

If SCHW could but find a competent team to manage the bank's assets they could vault to the top of this group in terms of financial and equity market performance. In the meantime, we hope that the folks at the Fed figure out how to publish the Y-9C and related documents for Raymond James.