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AI is incredible. It can teach you how to fry an egg and even write a poem pirate style, but it knows nothing about your work. Slackbot is different. It doesn't just know the facts. It knows your schedule. It can turn a brainstorm into a brief. And it doesn't need to be taught, because Slackbot isn't just another AI It's AI that knows your work as well as you do. Visit slack.com meetslackbot to learn more.
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Banks. They're the lifeblood of the economy, and each has a unique story to tell. We tear through this week's earnings from the Big six and try to keep your attention while doing it. K Pop Demon Hunters it ends with us. The Legend of Zelda Sony is going global with its hit movies. We explain how, and it turns out a century of market gains are due to very few stocks. We look at the stunning results of a study and what it might mean for modern investing. For Thursday, January 15, it's Brew Market Markets Daily, and I'm Ann Berry. More market details to come. But first we have a dense, packed show today, a big earnings roundup, a big acquisition. The markets are absorbing a ton of information right now and we do a lot of our own research, as you know, that you won't find anywhere else. So everyone, and particularly us, we're drinking from a fire hose, taking it all in. Well, in the thick of all this, we thought we start with a light palate cleanser to kick us off and put into longer perspective the daily rollercoaster that is the markets. The Wall Street Journal's Spencer Jacob just published a fascinating article citing Hendrik Bessembinder, a professor at Arizona State University who studied returns to every U.S. common stock traded on the New York and American stock exchanges and the NASDAQ from 1926 to through to 2023. What the professor found is somewhat astonishing. He found that just 86 out of thousands and thousands of these stocks have accounted for a whopping half of the stock market's gains in that time, and that all of its gains came from just the top 1,000 stocks. Now, bear in mind this data also comes in just before huge concentration in gains we've seen in tech in the past two years, giving birth to the reference that is the Mag 7. Now here's the nugget that really caught our eye. It wasn't great news, but it caught our eye. 96% of all the US public stocks in this history collectively returned the equivalent of one month treasury bill yields. I mean, there's nothing to say to that other than, ugh, when we think about all the work that goes into stock picking, all the energy that goes into following the roller coaster, a long period of time, that's what it boils into. But there are even more interesting nuggets in this Journal article. So as it goes on, it basically says here's to looking at Mark Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, because people are looking there for the hope of a different outcome. Now we've talked a lot on the show about IPOs in which founders and executives keep control of their companies even with public shareholders as the predominant owners. StubHub was a 2025 example in which post the IPO Eric Baker retained 90% voting control. And in the upcoming IPO IPO of equipment share, that's the construction equipment rental business, the founding Schlax brothers will hold Class B stock which will give them roughly 81% of the total voting power after the offering. Well, this is a somewhat controversial practice because you see a cases where founder voting power is outsized compared to their economic interest once they've taken money off the table through a public offering. Which raises questions of conflicts of interest and just fairness if other shareholders like you and me are taking disproportionate economic risks. Well, Jack Ablin, strategist at the money Manager Crescent has identified that founder led companies have beat the S P500 by 167 percentage points over the past five years. Now there's a big skew towards tech in there. Again cue the conversation around Mag7. But Berkshire Hathaway, Blackrock and Blackstone or the Bees are examples of long term founder led financials. So tech very much predominant. But again these are examples of financial services businesses with a similar profile. Now this isn't a universal strategy to go. We're not racing out to put our money to work behind founder run companies only because timing really does matter. Salesforce, for example, run by Mark Benioff, its co founder stock down 26% for the past year. But it is something to think about as we all work away trying to pick the winners. So one we thought that we would flag. I'll post a link to it on my X and Insta accounts later on today. Well, coming up, bank stocks largely soared in 2025. We're going to take a look at their recent earnings and break down what worked each of the big six. But first a word from our sponsor public. John, how serious are you about investing?
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Well, I produce a show about markets.
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So you're the kind of person who could be using public.com, it's an investment platform for those who take it seriously. You can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options and crypto.
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And now thanks to their new AI powered product Generated Assets, you can turn any idea into an investable index. Start with any prompt say renewable energy companies with high free cash flow and and it'll get to work. The AI can screen thousands of stocks and will build you a one of a kind index. Unless you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks.
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Just head to public.com brewmarkets to see it in action. That's public.com brewmarkets paid for by Public Investing.
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Full Disclosure in Podcast Description Banks we're.
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Going to talk banks now. Please don't let your eyes glaze over, though I do know it's tempting with the jargon and frankly the sameness a lot of the coverage of the sector and the reason I say hang on in there with us is because banks are the lifeblood of any economy. Everything we do is touched by banks. Everything. Their market caps make up a big chunk of the S&P 500. Their stocks largely soared in 2025, hitting price to book value ratios. That's a key valuation metric for the sector at record levels. So the biggest banks have announced their Q4 and full year earnings this week and we're about to whiz through their highlights. And most importantly, we're going to touch on how each is different because each really does have a different and un story. And stick with us for it because once we get through the banks, we're going to go through a treat of a story about the airlines. So let's take a look, let's go through these and just to be clear, we're going to hit the following six JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Wells Fargo all have their earnings out at this point. They all are very important. They collectively hire over a million people, employ over a million people. Excuse me. And the way we're going to go about this is John and I are each going to play the role of one of three banks.
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Each.
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Yes. And we're so committed to actually speaking in the voice of the bank that we are going to discuss that we have stickers to indicate so that as we look at each other we don't lose sight of who it is we are.
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That's right, name tags. Basically. Hello, my name is and I'll kick us Off. Hello, my name is JP Morgan.
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I like your JPM tag. Great ticker on your chest, on your sticker.
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That's right. And JP Morgan is market cap $850 billion. The ST stock is up 23% over the last year. I mean I am. I beat estimates on Tuesday adjusted earnings of $5.23 a share and revenue was up 7% year over year. Now JP Morgan profit fell 7% to $13 billion because of a pre announced $2.2 billion reserve tied to our takeover of the $20 billion Apple Card loan portfolio from Goldman Sachs. You talked about that earlier on the show. But that reserve number was before President Trump announced a possible cap on credit card interest rates for 10%. So the market is jittery on this.
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One share share price went down off the back of your earnings.
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JP Morgan, yeah, it's been down 6% this week earnings. But beyond credit card good news that equities are trading. Revenue surged 40% to just under $3 billion. The company I cited strong strength across operations especially and this is what makes me unique in businesses catering to hedge funds. And we know the hedge funds are doing well. But investment banking fees fell 5% to 2.3 billion. Those are the fees that banks charge when advising on major capital transactions like mergers, acquisitions, IPOs. And that's the thing. And in 2025 there was a new administration. There was an expectation that there would be increased M and A activity but with tariffs and other uncertainty it led companies to delay their plans. But I am excited for 2026 because it is going to be a big year promised for IPO and M&A.
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Thank you JP Morgan for telling us how your results went. Now I am Goldman Sachs. Here's my Goldman Sachs sticker holding it against my forehead. I'm going to stick it on my blazer in just a moment. Well, I, Goldman Sachs have seen my share price soar today in response to my earnings and it might be because I am winning at JP Morgan's expense. First of all, to set the context, ticker GS market cap $204 billion stock price up 60% over the past year and up like I said today over 4% at one point. Hitting an all time high by reporting fourth quarter quarter earnings this morning. 14 bucks a share plus a little bit in terms of EPS revenue of $13.5 billion. That's for Q4. So how am I, Goldman Sachs winning at the expense of JP Morgan in certain areas? Well, first of all, I have dumped the Apple credit card and its 20 billion dollar portfolio and handed over to JP Morgan just in time to dodge President Trump's 10% cap on interest rates to credit cards if indeed that happens. Just as a side note, I Goldman Sachs also got out of a credit card partnership with General Motors in 2025, negotiated wriggling out of that one in 2024, handed that over to Barclays. And the punchline here is that for Goldman Sachs, with 157 years of history predominantly in institutional corporate banking, I.e. mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, financings, that everyday consumer activity, credit cards, saving accounts below a certain wealth threshold just did not make sense for Goldman Sachs's traditional business. So let's talk a little bit about where else things are going well for Goldman. First of all, just as like I said, the flip side of JP Morgan missing expectations on investment banking advisory, someone had to win from that. Goldman Sachs came in number one for the year in mergers and acquisitions advisory, number two in high yield debt number three in equity capital markets, that is including things like equity issuances and IPOs. So overall in that client franchise area, Gorman doing really well also did really well in terms of benefiting from equities trading activity and that same volatility trading revenue up 25% from a year earlier. Earlier. Now the big strategic win for me, Goldman Sachs is that I have been focused, focused, focused on trying to grow into the asset and wealth management space that's investing on behalf of clients like pension funds and endowments and high net worth individuals as well as managing private equity funds that's buying companies and taking big stakes in companies and doing that in house. And the golden the magic thing associated with this part of the business is not only is it a massive global market, lots of opportunities to grow, but the fee streams attached to this are sticky. They are recurring. People don't tend to leave as lot versus when you think about it, advisory work like M and A tends to be lumpier and it tends to be beholden to things like, I don't know, a government shutdown, closing down the IPO pipeline versus asset management. People are still paying you a fee month in, month out, government shutdown or not, once you are managing their money. So Goldman has been leaning in to build out the team and capabilities here. Looks like it's paying off record management and other fees of $11.5 billion for the year. Record private banking and net lending revenues of 3.3 billion for the year, up 16%. So it's a strong 2025. And also Goldman in their analyst program analyst call today laying out also a plan for how they want to continue to grow in emerging markets and get efficiency gains going forward. That was me. Goldman Sachs. You're now bank of America. Follow that if you can. John Cristo.
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It's going to be difficult, but watch this. I am bank of America ticker, which I would have liked, but BAC or bam.
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L B A M L. Yes, it's right. BAC by in. Your sticker looks great.
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Thank you. And I am known for my consumer services and refresh market cap. I have a market cap of $385 billion. I'm the second largest U.S. bank by assets after JPMorgan Chase. And my stock has been up 12% over the last year. I posted a solid, solid quarter on Wednesday, narrowly beating earnings estimates with revenue of $28 billion and earnings of 98 cents a share, which also beat estimates. And here's my highlight reel. Revenue from equity trading rose 23%.
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Same old, same old. Everyone else has that too.
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Yeah, but it was more than analysts expected. And I benefited from volatility. So let's think it through. Tariffs and geopolitical unrest whipsaw the markets. That means more client trading activity. And I took my cut.
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So did the others.
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Okay, but here is also similar to the others. My CEO took some heat about expenses due to headcount and relative slow pace of growth. This and he expects us to be back on a streak. And overall said he's bullish on the US economy in 2026.
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All right, but give us, give us a thing for bank of America. Your bank of America, you are known for consumer services.
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We added 680,000 new net consumer checking accounts in 2025. We added 4 million small business checking accounts in 2025. And just under $600 billion in consumer investment assets, which was up 16%. So that along with 1.2 trillion in payments, up 5%. I think we're doing well.
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I did read that. Also bank of America, your provision for credit losses in the consumer business, which is really the sign of health and resilience, was actually down 15%. That's good news in terms of a sign for what's going on with the consumer. 28 consecutive quarters of net growth for your consumer checking account growth numbers. But your stock hasn't been doing so well after your earnings results.
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No, that's right. We are down. But so many banks were down this week.
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Sentiment issue. Okay. I am now bank of America. I'm now Morgan Stanley. New sticker on my forehead soon to go on my blazer ticker. Ms. Market cap $305 billion share price up 46% over the last year and up nearly 6% today. So rather like Goldman Sachs, the two that reported today share price is up. And Morgan Stanley also crushed earnings revenue of nearly a billion dollar 18 billion. Excuse me. Earnings also beat expectations. And what was the key to Morgan Stanley's success? Here's what we did. Well, wealth management and by the way, the way in which we Morgan Stanley have grown in the wealth management space, in the asset management space frankly kind of inspired Goldman Sachs's push into the sector. Goldman Sachs looked over at Morgan Stanley and said if they can do that, we should do that. And Morgan Stanley has done it very, very well. The wealth management unit posted over $8 billion in net revenue, up 11% for last year. And this is the big number I wanting to Total client assets in the wealth and investment management business climbed to over $9 trillion. That is a lot of money to be taken care of. By the way, over at Morgan Stanley we did well in M and A advisory fees too. Looks like together with Goldman Sachs and possibly one other, we're going to talk about challenging JP Morgan in terms of share in the advisory world.
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All right, well listen to this. I am Citibank Ticker C market cap of $215 billion. Stock price up over 50% over the past year, up over 4% today. And overall I had positive quarter as a part of my turnaround. That's the key here. I've been on a multi year push to eliminate 20,000 jobs by the end of 2026. And there's more work to be done. Revenue rose 2% to nearly 20 billion in the last quarter and adjusted earnings of $1.81 beat estimates. Now admittedly net income fell 13% but that was due in large part to a $1.1 billion after tax loss tied to selling our Russian operations. And we're trying to turn things around. We're getting rid of these international projects that don't benefit us. And this is all part of our CEO Jane Fraser's push to simplify and modernize the bank. The highlight this week was a memo she sent out to all employees saying we are not graded on effort, we are judged on our results. And I expect to see the last vestiges of old bad habits fall away and a more disciplined, more confident winning city emerge in 2026. So Citi, I'm getting ready for a great 2026, tightening things up, lots of.
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Layoffs also though, I've got to hand it to You, Citi, you have been doing layoffs, but you have been hiring top talent into areas that you do want to grow into. In investment banking and wealth management. There's a theme here. Banks are telling us where they think the money is going to get made. You did see a surge in deal making fees. I actually kind of jealous, John, that you got to be city because I think Fraser is a very impressive executive. Yes, there's a lot going on over there. The other thing I'll say about Citi is the CEO Jane Fraser has done a very good job of communicating to the market what to expect. So the market did know that there was going to be an exit from the Russian operations with a loss tied to that. The market did know that there were going to be sales of non core overseas operations. So the lesson there in how the job of the CEO is to manage expectations. That is a very important part of this story. And so for the last ticker, I'm going to be someone who has not done that very well and I have an identity crisis. I am Wells Fargo. Stickers on my forehead, sticker on my blazer. Market cap $280 billion. Stock price up 17 over the last year. Share price down after earnings this week. I issued mixed results yesterday. Revenue from investment banking fell 1%. Advisory, though, has not historically been my superpower. I am known on Wall Street, Wells Fargo, I, Wells Fargo, I'm known on Wall street for actually being pretty good at financing deals. I do sign up to supporting acquisitions by helping companies to issue debt to providing financing to my corporate clients. But the advisory side has not historically been my superpower. Lending remains subpar. I was known for being a staple in the mortgage market until a fake account scandal came to light. And the regulatory framework I had to work in as a result of that, the restrictions placed on me have been somewhat debilitating in that market. I'm a, I'm sort of emerging from that reputational damage. But I haven't really found a niche. I haven't found a superpower that I can go to people and say this is my superpower anymore in the way that I once used to when it came to the mortgage market. Well, I've been slimming down our workforce here at Wells Fargo for the past several quarters. 6% headcount reduced last year. Stock down again. I have just not clearly articulated a strategy for growth. That's it. We made it. We are through bank earnings. We did it. You now all know what has been going on with those six massive, massive players. And to take the edge of. As we sort of come down from our bank discussion, we're going to transition to a story that caught our eye, frankly, just because we love talking about the airlines. We use airlines, and it's fun to talk about the things that we use, but also just the way in which two worlds come together in the story is really, really fascinating. So we're going to take a break from the intensity of the banks and we're going to talk about the following instead. Research analysts at Jefferies have issued a report saying that adoption of GLP1 weight loss drugs could lower fuel bills for airlines. And here is the logic. Fuel is the single largest cost for the airlines, and lighter passengers means less weight of the aircraft, meaning less fuel is consumed in flight. Now, Jefferies ran the math to conclude that a 10% reduction in average passenger weight could translate to up to 1 1/2% lower fuel costs, which in turn could translate to the equivalent of as much as a 4% boost to earnings per share.
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Yes, and this is fascinating, and I don't know if I need to talk to someone in the airline industry, but they also said that the projected possible impact doesn't lift all airlines equally. Under Jeffrey's math, there's potential EPS gains with about 2.8% for Delta, but 3.5% for United and nearly 12% for American.
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And with GOP is now in pill form, adoption could pick up. So, I mean, it's here, it's here, it's here.
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And, you know, and every time we go to the airport and we have our bag weighed, we know that this industry is fixated on weight. In 2018, United Airlines switched its Hemisphere magazine to lighter paper, which trimmed about an ounce per copy, a move expected to save 170,000 gallons of fuel annually, worth roughly $290,000 at the time. We've seen little things. They got rid of the seat back monitors. There's.
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That's right. Yeah, that's right. It's the penny's business, as long as they don't cut back on snacks, because that's what gets me through these flights. And because I'm small, I usually end up in the middle seat. So I need to make sure that they keep the weight allocated on the actual food offering. We're going to take a quick break. We've earned a quick break. And when we come back, we'll take a spin through headlines that move the market today. It's 4pm on the east Coast. There it is, the closing bell. The market's wrapping up for the day. We don't have a ticker, so instead we'll throw it over to our human ticker, our producer John.
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The markets bounced back today. The S&P 500 and the NASDAQ both finished up a quarter of a percent and the Dow finished up 6.10 of a percent. Some market headlines Shares in medical devices company Boston Scientific ticker BSX were down 4% after the company announced it will buy Penumbra Ticker pen for about $15 billion in cash and stock.
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While Penumbra is known for its cardiovascular devices and the company saw revenue of $1.4 billion last year, Penumbra recently had a very successful landmark trial for its technology in treating intermediate to high risk pulmonary embolism, which is widely expected to change the standard of care. Shares in Penumbra jumping 12% but as John said, Boston Scientific shareholders not so excited. Down again 4% after that announcement.
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. TSMC reported a 35% increase in fourth quarter profit which beat estimates.
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TSMC says it plans to ramp up investment to 56% billion in 2026, which is a real sign of confidence in sustained big tech spending on AI buildouts. Nvidia also bounced back from Wednesday's decline. Remember, we saw a bit of a sell off yesterday in general, but gained 3%. Another show of confidence that the AI trade will continue. And finally, Netflix sealed a deal today and this time with Sony. Now this is an industry first deal with a $7 billion plus worldwide licensing agreement that will see Sony's movies streamed around the globe on Netflix following their full theatrical and home entertainment windows.
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Netflix currently has rights to stream Sony's feature films in select territories including the U.S. germany and across Southeast Asia. This would eventually roll out rights globally and a lot of motivators for this deal, but maybe none bigger than Sony's K Pop Demon Hunters, which was number one on Netflix last year. Netflix wants to sew up that relationship.
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Everyone is pushing to make sure they lock down that ip. It's what it's all about. Name of the game and entertainment right now. Well, tomorrow I'm going to be joined by Alex Steel. I'm super excited about this. She's the brilliant former energy reporter and TV anchor from Bloomberg, now working inside the energy industry. Her clients are big energy companies and we're going to jargon bust the current state of oil and gas around the globe, what it means to us in the United States, most importantly, what means to investors. There is so much about energy and the geopolitics of energy that is moving the market right now. A substantive breakdown on that vital, vital market. So do tune in tomorrow. It's gonna be a great conversation. That's it for today's Brew Markets Daily.
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Brew Markets Daily is hosted by Anne Barry and produced by John Croteau, Targa Belletif and Emily Milliart. Our technical director is Lonnie Fiskus. Brittany Dotto is our audio engineer. And the president of Morning Brew, Inc. Is Devin Emery.
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Wake up tomorrow with the Morning Brew newsletter and tune in to Neil and Toby on Morning Brew Daily. We'll see you back here tomorrow, same time, Sam.