Let’s begin with the bad news — the last three months of 2018 were a bloodbath for bond traders. This week’s fourth-quarter reports from America’s big banks have shown that without exception they comfortably missed Wall Street’s revenue forecasts for fixed-income, commodity and currency, or FICC, trading.
JP Morgan, the largest, which has a habit of beating forecasts, was the worst performer in this department. FICC trading revenue was nearly 19 per cent below estimates and, at $1.86 billion, was lower than that of Citigroup, the fourth largest US bank. Goldman Sachs, once the bond-trading king of Wall Street, missed forecasts by 16 per cent; Citi was off by 13 per cent and Bank of America by nearly 12 per cent.
Marianne Lake, chief financial