Big-Bank Q3 Earnings: EPS Beats, Misses and What Drove Them
The largest U.S. banks reported third-quarter 2026 results on October 13, 2026, with earnings expected to run up to 20% higher than a year earlier.
The reporting date is anchored by Forbes. The expectation was set out before the results by Reuters. The outcome was described as strong profits across Wall Street's biggest banks by the Boston Herald.
Citi earned $2.85 per share in the quarter, above the $2.66 average analyst forecast, according to Reuters. EPS, or earnings per share, is profit divided by each share of stock. Consensus is the average forecast. The gap left Citi about 19 cents above that line.
JPMorgan earned $5.57 per share, below the $5.85 LSEG estimate, according to Reuters. The miss was about 28 cents per share. Investment banking fees, the fees for advising on mergers and stock and bond sales, fell 8% in the same report. The report cited trading strength for the quarter.
Goldman Sachs beat quarterly profit estimates, according to Reuters. Equities revenue, largely income from facilitating stock trades, jumped 72% in the quarter. Investment banking fees rose 21% in the quarter.
Wells Fargo beat Wall Street estimates for third-quarter profit, according to Reuters. The same report said net interest income and total revenue came in below expectations. Net interest income, or NII, is the difference between what a bank earns on loans and what it pays on deposits.
Away from the bank prints, share sales at OpenAI and Anthropic minted hundreds of millionaires, according to the Wall Street Journal. That private-market sale did not enter third-quarter bank earnings directly. Bank investors track it as part of the fee and wealth backdrop.
The broader context here is that a strong group quarter can still leave open questions bank by bank. Trading and investment banking revenue varied across Wall Street in the quarter, as noted by Forbes. Think of lending as the steady engine and trading and deal-making as the changeable part that explains most of the spread. JPMorgan's 8% decline in investment banking fees sat apart from Goldman's 21% increase, and Goldman's 72% jump in equities revenue shaped its mix. Citi's 19-cent beat reads differently from Wells Fargo's beat paired with lower NII and revenue, where provisioning, expenses or noninterest items did work that spread income did not. JPMorgan's 28-cent miss with an 8% fee decline reads differently from Goldman's beat with 21% fee growth and a 72% equities gain.
In my view, the quarter calls for a desk-by-desk reading rather than one call on the whole sector. Lending steadiness supported the group result described in third-quarter coverage, while Wall Street desks drove the variance. The next data to watch is whether NII steadies enough to let fee and trading swings matter less for forward return on tangible common equity, profit measured against core shareholder capital, and whether the gap in banking fees narrows or lasts into the fourth-quarter pipeline.
