US Banks: Five learnings from earnings

We detail five key takeaways from the recent earnings reports of the largest US banks. What did we learn?

1) Banks are show me stories on revenue and pre-provision profit growth;

2) Equities sales and trading results were remarkably strong, but FICC is normalizing;

3) Core profitability should be assessed using pre-provision profits minus net charge offs, not reported pre-tax earnings;

4) Credit card growth remains limited; and

5) Excess liquidity keeps growing as deposit growth outpaces loan growth.

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