Telis Demos

There are a range of forces working against brokers like Robinhood Markets, including lower interest rates and still tepid stock trading activity. In its fourth quarter, reported Tuesday, the online brokerage said it attracted a net $1.3 billion of account transfers from other brokers and that it has already exceeded that halfway through the first quarter of 2024. It also added roughly 100,000 accounts to its [new retirement offering](https://www.wsj/articles/robinhood-retirement-accounts-yolo-a89d270a), and about $600 million more of retirement assets under custody over the course of the fourth quarter.

In crypto land, winter is already turning to spring: A price surge for bitcoin and other crypto assets at the end of last year helped lift Coinbase to its first quarterly profit in years. Coinbase shares surged about 15% Friday morning after it reported earnings late Thursday, and have now nearly tripled over the past year. The crypto-trading giant had $529 million of transaction revenue in the fourth quarter, a more than 80% rise over the third quarter.

How long can the sunny season last for crypto stocks?

On Thursday, Wells Fargo announced that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency [lifted a consent order](https://www.wsj/finance/banking/wells-fargo-resolves-a-regulatory-complaint-at-heart-of-2016-fake-account-scandal-65f570eb) related to the bank’s [fake-accounts scandal](https://www.wsj/articles/wells-fargos-sales-scandal-tally-grows-to-around-3-5-million-accounts-1504184598?mod=article_inline) of several years ago. While the sales practices underlying that order represent perhaps the biggest reputational stain that a major bank has [absorbed in recent years](https://www.wsj/finance/banking/wells-fargo-fake-account-scandal-aftermath-2b9b11e9), it was arguably less financially consequential than the Federal Reserve’s 2018 order that also imposed an unprecedented cap on the bank’s total asset size.

Becoming the next Visa or Mastercard is a tall order, but isn’t necessary for Discover’s network to pay off.

Last March, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed and kicked off the most significant U.S. banking crisis in years. A few months later, the Federal Reserve proposed a series of major changes to how big lenders are regulated. The Fed proposals are known as the “Basel III endgame,” in reference to completing the implementation of global banking reforms first outlined well over a decade ago, following the 2008 financial meltdown.

昨年の米銀行危機の数カ月後、FRBは大手金融機関の規制方法を大幅に見直す案を示したが、規制案と銀行危機との関連性は一般に考えられているよりも低い。

JPMorgan Chase generated $13.4 billion in net income in its just-reported first quarter, up just 6% from a year prior. In plain English, that is a measure of its equity capital divided by the value of its assets, after adjusting each asset’s value for riskiness. “Our capital cup runneth over,” Chief Executive James Dimon told analysts on Friday.

Goldman Sachs turned in a vintage quarter in its core Wall Street business. Another surge in financing its institutional trading clients helped drive overall fixed income, currency and commodities trading up by 10% over the first quarter last year. All of that was aided by the bank’s increased focus on lending more to core Wall Street clients, a vital cog in Chief Executive David Solomon’s plans.

Back in the 1990s, a popular game on Wall Street and cable news was to monitor the size and heft of Alan Greenspan’s suitcase on his way into rate-setting meetings at the Federal Reserve. A packed briefcase, the thinking went, portended a possible rate hike as it suggested the Fed Chair was coming armed with materials to make the case. On Thursday, Blackstone President Jonathan Gray resurrected this prognosticating tool, albeit for a different purpose: forecasting more deployments of capital by the alternative asset manager.