2023年1月15日

2022年，美國銀行業變得很奇怪。上周五，以摩根大通(JPMorgan Chase)為首的四家大公司公布了全年業績。在全球宏觀經濟籠罩一片迷霧之際，基本情況仍然非常熟悉:消費者表現良好，而金融市場和投資銀行家卻在一場清醒的噩夢中跌跌撞撞。投資者不確定如何看待這一切是可以理解的。勞動力市場強勁，普通民眾仍在愉快地度假和娛樂消費——可能與2021年底的速度不太一樣，但信用卡使用仍然健康，貸款損失低於長期正常水平。與其他投行一樣，摩根大通在美國經濟方麵得到了相互矛盾的信號。摩根大通(JPMorgan)、美國銀行(Bank of America)、花旗集團(Citigroup)和富國銀行(Wells Fargo)都撥出了更多資金，以應對壞賬可能增加的情況，但反常的是，這既是出於對衰退的擔憂，也是出於對消費者信心的擔憂。為什麼?因為它是由人們去買好玩的東西時信用卡借貸的增長所推動的。當COVID-19襲來時，人們連續數月困在家裏，停止了消費，減少了債務。貸款市場的複蘇一直很緩慢。 JPMorgan’s total credit card balances finally got back to pre-pandemic levels in 2022, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are still rebuilding. There’s an extra wrinkle that is making earnings numbers hard for investors and analysts to get their heads around: A change in how banks have to account for credit risk that was introduced last year, which means more losses are front-loaded. The upshot, if you make more loans, you immediately need to book more provisions for bad debts. Of course, the economy is expected to deteriorate as well, and bank executives said their outlook had worsened slightly, but they are still mainly expecting only a mild downturn later this year. Boom in revenue For example, Mark Mason, Citigroup’s finance chief, said on a call with reporters that a soft landing for the US economy was “very manageable”. Advertisement Loss rates on US credit cards have risen at all the banks, but remain below levels that were normal before the pandemic struck. For Citi-branded cards, losses in the final quarter were 1.7 per cent of total balances versus the 3.75 per cent that was normal pre-pandemic, Mason said. At JPMorgan, they were 1.5 per cent for the full year of 2022, versus 3.1 per cent for 2019. At Bank of America they were 1.6 per cent for 2022 versus 3.1 per cent. And so on. These numbers will worsen, but none of the banks is currently expecting them to accelerate much beyond what used to be normal. “Currently” is the keyword, however. As Jeremy Barnum, JPMorgan’s finance chief said at the end of his presentation to investors: “I’ve emphasised the uncertainty.” Meanwhile, the benefit of lending more as interest rates rise is booming revenue: JPMorgan and Wells Fargo both reported nearly 50 per cent growth in net interest income for the fourth quarter over the prior year. The rest of the numbers were much as expected for the fourth quarter and full year across the banks. Bond and currency trading blew the roof off: Bank of America had its best fourth-quarter revenue ever and its best full year since 2010. Trading of stocks was flat to slightly down. Investment banking fees for deal advice and fundraisings were a washout, down nearly 60 per cent in the fourth quarter versus the previous year at JPMorgan and Citigroup. The less expected dark spot in some of these results though was losses on investments for the future. Wells Fargo booked a $US1 billion write-down in the value of its own portfolio of venture capital investments, primarily software companies. JPMorgan has had an accident of its own with the $US175 million deal for Frank, a student finance business bought in 2021 that it now says was a fraud. Dimon said he would talk more about that foul-up when litigation arising from the takeover was finished. The bank declined to discuss how much it lost on the deal, but it’s already written down some of the cost and had not yet handed over the full payment. It might also win its case, especially given the evidence it has presented in its lawsuit, as detailed by my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Matt Levine. Goldman Sachs on Friday also released some ugly historic numbers on its own costly forays into new digital and consumer-focused banking ahead of results next week. But away from the technology fumbles and the general economic fears and woes we all read about every day, the story of US banking is still quite good. JPMorgan and Bank of America both turned in better profits than expected and Dimon expects to restart share buybacks sooner than expected. Weird, right? — Bloomberg Opinion