JPMorgan Quarterly Trading Revenue on Pace to Jump, Pinto Says

• February 27 2018
• Hugh Son

JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s trading revenue is on pace to increase by “mid to high single digits” in the first three months of 2018 with a spike in market volatility poised to help Wall Street firms break a three-quarter slump in that business.

JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s trading revenue is on pace to increase by “mid to high single digits” in the first three months of 2018 with a spike in market volatility poised to help Wall Street firms break a three-quarter slump in that business.

“Clearly, the year has started well,” Daniel Pinto, who oversees the trading and investment banking unit of the largest U.S. bank, said Tuesday. He gave the forecast in response to a question from an analyst at the firm’s annual investor day.

Volatility is back in markets, as U.S. stocks experienced their worst single-day plunge in almost seven years earlier this month and 10-year U.S. Treasury yields reached the highest level in more than four years. While the wild run may have unnerved ordinary investors, for large banks it represented the possible end of a preternatural calm that weighed on results in 2017.

Read more about the volatility jolt giving traders a boost

Pinto said first-quarter investment-banking revenue is on pace to be unchanged or slightly up compared with the year-earlier period.