You're Doing 'Fine'—Here's What Big Bank Execs Said About Consumers This Week
That's the take at JPMorgan Chase (JPM), one of several large U.S. financial institutions to report results in recent days. (Here are links to Investopedia's coverage of JPMorgan's earnings, along with reports on Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup.)
Consumers 'remained resilient, with healthy spending and asset quality,' Bank of America (BAC) CEO Brian Moynihan said in a press release. Inflation data for June, released this week, indicated an uptick, while retail sales numbers for last month are due to be released Thursday.
Bank earnings are watched not only by those who care about the health of a bank's business, but also for data and commentary on the state of the economy. Here's a selection of comments from bank executives from conference calls made available by AlphaSense, lightly edited for readability.
JP Morgan Chase CFO Jeremy Barnum: 'The consumer basically seems to be fine.'
'If you look at indicators of stress, not surprisingly, you see a little bit more stress in the lower income bands than you see in the higher income bands, but that's always true. That's pretty much definitionally true. And nothing there is out of line with our expectations. Our delinquency rates are also in line with expectations. You saw that we kept our net charge-off guidance unchanged. So, all of that looks kind of fine.
'And to be honest, as we've said before, fundamentally, while there are nuances around the edges, consumer credit is primarily about the labor market. And in a world with a 4.1% unemployment rate, it's just going to be hard, especially in our portfolio, to see a lot of weakness.'
Citigroup (C) CEO Jane Fraser: 'The strength of the U.S. economy, driven by the American entrepreneur and a healthy consumer, has certainly been exceeding expectations of late. As I've been speaking to CEOs, I've yet again been impressed by the adaptability of our private sector, aided by the depth and breadth of the American capital markets.'
Wells Fargo (WFC) CEO Charlie Scharf, from the company's call: 'As we look ahead, what we see regarding the health of our clients and customers has not changed. Consumers and businesses remain strong as unemployment remains low and inflation remains in check.
'Credit card spending growth softened very slightly in the second quarter, but is still up year-over-year and remains strong overall, and debit card spending growth has remained strong and consistent with what we saw in prior quarters. Consumer delinquencies continue to improve from a year ago, and commercial credit performance continues to be relatively strong. Deposit flows for both our consumer and commercial clients were in line with seasonal trends.'
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