Global banks are expected to boost trading revenue by 10% in Q2

A new study by Crisil Coalition Greenwich finds that leading banks around the globe, including several of America’s largest, are set to lift revenue from trading activities by about 10% in the April-to-June quarter, as markets reacted to changes in U.S. tariff policy.

The firm’s data, reported by Reuters, shows that trading income for the same 12 banks rose by 15% from January to March, and the projections continue that trend.

In late June, top executives at Bank of America and Citigroup told investors they expect market revenue to grow by the mid-to-high single digits this quarter, building on a strong start to the year.

When these U.S. banking giants report their Q2 results next week, analysts and senior bankers say they could even surpass those forecasts.

The uptick comes after President Donald Trump’s announcements on new trade duties in early April triggered wide swings in equity prices and drove turnover in U.S. Treasuries to record highs, according to trading platform Tradeweb Markets.

“Anybody that’s in the market-making business, providing people with instantaneous liquidity, is going to benefit,” said a veteran Wall Street executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity about client flows.

He added that with stocks tumbling, bond yields rising, and currencies sliding, many investors sought to reduce risk across their portfolios.

12 global banks to lead the surge

Crisil’s figures cover 12 institutions, from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley to Wells Fargo and their European peers.

Mollie Devine, who leads markets analytics at Coalition, noted that sudden price moves often boost trading profits. She called some of the tariff news a “positive catalyst” for desks looking to capitalise on volatility.

Even so, Devine pointed out that equity trading outpaced both bond and currency business, despite stock markets being smaller than fixed-income or foreign-exchange venues.

She estimates that revenues from equities jumped about 18% in Q2 compared with the same three months last year, while bond trading climbed roughly 5%.

Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo said banks are enjoying sustained elevated deal volumes due to ongoing uncertainty around trade policy, interest-rate shifts, and geopolitical tensions.

“The higher trading in the last few years is not an aberration, but more a path back to normal after 15 years of zero percent interest rates,” he explained.

Tradeweb’s data supports this view.

In April, its average daily trading volume hit $2.7 trillion, up nearly 39% from April 2024, and in March, it set an all-time record of $2.71 trillion per day.

On its platform, U.S. government bond trades in April surged to the highest monthly total ever, with the biggest weekly gain since 2001 following those first tariff alerts.

2025 trading revenue could hit a 16-year high

Looking ahead, Coalition Greenwich predicts that total market revenue for its index banks will rise about 7% in 2025 index, compared with a 13% increase seen in the first half.

At $246.2 billion, that would be the strongest annual result since 2009, the year after the financial crisis erupted.

Meanwhile, Mayo forecasts that major U.S. lenders will see trading revenue climb around 8% in the first half of 2025, slow to about 5% in the back half of the year, and settle into low single-digit growth in 2026. “The immediate effect of the tariffs was to exaggerate the extent of trading,” but as that news fades, so will the spike in trading, he said.

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