Jason Hall

Huge trading activity.

Think about institutional trading.

That's a big thing for these investment banks.

We have refinancing, a business-friendly administration.

All of those things are encouraging more deal-making.

The big $55 billion acquisition of EA, that was Goldman that was advising.

You put it all together, on the consumer side, the banks are doing well.

We don't see any big immediate risks in the economy.

Nobody took big moves to bolster their balance sheets for imminent credit losses.

If their comments weren't sanguine, they were very cautiously optimistic about the economy.

Maybe management's whistling through the graveyard and not as confident as they proclaim.

But I think it's just more evidence that enough of the consumer class is strong enough to prop up the economy.

And the biggest banks, I think, are largely de-risked from the middle- and lower-income families that are struggling right now.

Yeah, Jeff, I think that's right in terms of what's happening now.

But again, I think thinking about the difference between the cyclical realities of these sorts of businesses and the secular trends is really important.

Yes, it's a blistering market for stocks and crypto is driving the bulk of the results.

But look at BlackRock, which is an absolute giant here, just reported a 17% increase in assets to $13.5

trillion.

Most of that was the result of increases in stock market value.

I think that 10% accounts growth, that's nothing to sniff at.