Robert Armstrong

Citigroup gained more than 60%, 63% over the year, which was kind of unbelievable.

And for all of those reasons you describe, you have these regulatory conditions, which are better.

You have more M&A, global M&A volume was up more than 40% for the year, which means that your investment banking business is crushing it.

Also,

One thing that I would add there that you didn't mention is the volatility that we saw in the stock market, which is so good if you're a trader.

I mean, just the more it goes up and down, which it did, the more trading activity happens and the more money you make from facilitating those trades.

So trading revenue was up 15% last year.

So I think the question then is,

You'd think that because we had such a big year in 2025, we're probably not going to have that kind of year again in 2026.

But I'm not so sure because I don't see any of these conditions changing.

And then I would add one other thing, which is it seems that the IPO market is going to explode soon.

might be a strong word, but it seems like it's going to really come online this year.

If you've got SpaceX in the pipeline, potentially OpenAI, potentially Anthropic, that would be a great thing for the banks too.

These would be some of the largest IPOs of all time.

So my preliminary thought is 2026 is going to be a great year to be a bank as well.

But I want to see what you think.

Yes.

Okay.

I think that's a good way to frame it.

The pressure on the stock will be the multiples.