Tyler Crowe

It's 2026 and banking is booming.

This is Motley Fool Money.

Tyler Crowe Welcome to Motley Fool Money.

I'm Tyler Crowe.

Today, I'm joined by longtime Fool contributors Matt Frankel and John Quast.

It's that time again, folks, earnings season.

We'll discuss earnings today, this proposal from the Trump administration to cap credit card rates because we are talking about banks, and of course, what Thursday show would be complete without talking about stocks on our radar.

But first, when I opened up Bloomberg this morning, and not my terminal, I'm not that fancy or have that kind of setup,

Two related items caught my eye.

Two investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, reported earlier today, and they had stellar results in certain sections.

Goldman mentioned its trading unit, and Morgan Stanley for its investment banking fees, mostly related to helping companies issue debt.

One of the ones they mentioned was Meta Platforms for its massive AI data infrastructure build-out.

As we are talking right now, Goldman and Morgan Stanley are up 4%, 5% respectively.

Look, this isn't the most detailed analysis of banks, but I think it's fair to say that within investment banking, they love volatility and vibes.

Volatility for their trading operations, like we saw with Goldman, and vibes to get companies to do things like issue debt, do mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, all the cool corporate activity that banks love to do.

Clearly, investment banks are liking what happened last quarter.

Now, Matt, you are, of the three of us, probably the most extensive bank coverer or observer of banks we have.

What were some of the other themes you saw from banking earnings this past quarter?

I want to broaden the lens a little bit here, because I think bank earnings is like holding up a mirror to Wall Street and the market writ large.

I think it's a good way to focus on the vibes a little bit.