The best trading desk to be on is rates. And mortgages
The five big American banks reported their Q3 earnings this week: JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America. The investment banks of all five did well, and their sales & trading desks seem to have done especially well – although not equally.
The best-performing teams seem to be rates and mortgage traders. Both are easily explicable – the Fed cut rates in September for the first time this year. It’s not exactly a lot of volatility, but it’s enough to drive what Citi called “elevated client activity”.
Three of the five banks noted their rates team as high performers in Q3 of 2025 compared to the same period of 2024. Both Goldman and Citi credited their mortgage traders’ performances, too.
Currency, credit, and commodities trading performance
It wasn’t all positive, however – currency and credit traders had a mixed bag. While Citi praised its currency traders for their performances, Goldman noted that its team had logged “significantly lower” net revenues.
Credit traders had a similar mixed performance, being noted by JPMorgan as performing well and by Goldman as performing poorly. Morgan Stanley credited credit as being the primary driver of its super FICC performance, too.
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs also reported that their commodities teams did well.
Prime brokerage performance
Prime services – which are offered by banks to hedge funds – also grew significantly. Four of the five banks noted that their teams had performed better than last quarter, and Citi even noted that its team had increased revenue by 44% YoY, a rate of growth almost double that of its equities operation as a whole. Morgan Stanley noted that it logged record results in its prime brokerage business.
Investment banking performance
All five of the investment banks noted that [investment] banking revenue was up across the board in the third quarter, and across all products. Goldman stated that leveraged finance revenue, which is under the debt capital markets umbrella, was up significantly, as well as revenue from IPOs and completed M&A.
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