The Institutional Risk Analyst

The major Wall Street investment firms tracked by the WGA Bank Top 50 followed the industry trend and reported lower credit costs in Q1 2026. Income was higher due to the brisk activity in the capital markets in the first three months of the year, but asset returns and funding costs fell significantly. We suspect that both trends will be partially reversed in Q2 2026 results and very visible in 2H 2026. Suffice to see that Elon Musk was lucky indeed to get his IPO for SpaceX

AMP is one of the highest valued banks in the WGA Bank Top 50 test group, currently just below 7x book value. Last year and in 2024, AMP touched 9x book value because of the strong growth in the bank’s core advisory business. The stock has traded off because of fears that AI will displace investment managers and a more general rotation away from financials after last year’s blazing performance.

Many banks, led by the likes of Charles Schwab (SCHW) and Bank of America (BAC), refused to restructure their bond portfolios when interest rates were lower, leaving billions of dollars in potential earnings sitting on the table. As we discuss below, SCHW had a yield on its securities book, which is almost half of the group’s assets, of less than 2% at year-end 2025. Why is this OK?

We all were more than a little amused to learn that in the most recent bank stress tests the Federal Reserve Board decided to ignore the massive financial and reputation risk in private equity and private credit. With cash bids for private assets plummeting, and sponsors in full flight due to prospective litigation by jilted clients, how do the Fed and other bank regulators retain any credibility? Our friend Nom de Plumber had an appropriate observation...

And just why do financial firms like HOOD, SoFi Technologies (SOFI) and Block (XYZ) talk about EBITDA in their investor materials?

We think it is notable that AMP has underperformed the other members of the group other than SCHW over the past year.

The SVB duration management from 2020 onward was recklessly negligent by any reasonable standard

As and when GS can exit the loss leading credit card relationship with AAPL, the performance of the business should improve significantly.

When SCHW surpassed U.S. Bancorp in size in 2021, you knew that SCHW’s leadership had gotten lost.

The banking industry has segmented into a handful of above-average performers and JPM is the largest leader of these "winners"

SCHW needs to take advantage of their strong operating leverage and repair some needless damage done during COVID by inept bank management.

Big banks have big CRE exposures, too. So what drives this marvelous progression up the wall of worry?