Tyler Crowe

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.

John, I'll send this to you.

Things like large debt issuance, M&A activity, IPOs, things don't happen as much when everyone on Wall Street is miserable.

So, seeing these earnings, a little bit of the vibe check.

John, where does your mind go as an investor when looking at what these results say about market vibes?

Certainly appreciate the Charlie Munger, always invert approach here, where whether good vibes means more good vibes are on the way or good vibes are making those grasps at the next leg of growth in ways that we don't normally think of it that way.

Well, a little bit on the vibe check thing, especially for banks, is that the Trump administration proposal to cap interest rates came out this week.

We'll take a look at the ripple effects of capped credit card rates after the break.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration put out a statement about wanting to cap interest rates on credit cards at 10%.

Now, there's a lot of paths we could take with this discussion, some of which we're not too keen to walk, because they'd likely turn an investing-themed podcast into a political one way too fast.