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00:00 Josh
America’s biggest banks are closing out 2025 in a position they haven’t been in for years. Record stock prices, growing balance sheets and what some executives are calling the most open regulatory environment since the financial crisis. For more, we’re bringing in now our Yahoo Finance banking reporter, David Hollerith. David.
00:20 David
Hey, Josh.
00:21 David
Um, so last week, uh, a number of of large bank CEOs spoke at a Goldman Sachs Financial Services conference. And generally the takeaway from what they said and what we’ve seen this year and this week has been, um, you know, another great year in the books for the banking sector. But for the biggest banks, um, it’s kind of a unique position because, um, two of them have kind of taken a more offensive position in setting like growth targets that they want to hit or profitability targets.
00:54 David
Now, for a while, we’ve kind of always had uh one of the larger banks in some way having to deal with regulatory burden or something like that. And we’re we’re in a scenario now where all those banks are are looking more at growth. A great example of this is J.P. Morgan Chase, which for years has been performing fairly well. Uh they came out with an announcement about how they’re going to increase their expenses by $10 billion next year.
01:21 David
Now, we don’t know the other side of that, how much revenue they’re going to actually bring in yet. Um but a lot of that is is pointed towards updating their credit card program and uh doing AI technological advancements. And then also um, you know, adding adding to their strategic investments. So all that taken together is kind of been seen as a big move that a lot of other banks are going to be eager to follow in some way if they can.
01:52 David
Um and so kind of the the sentiment is that everybody is looking at their growth plans and trying to sort of reevaluate what they can do. The other side of this too is that the Trump administration has been uh very actively pushing for a de-regulatory um financial services industry or a deregulated financial services industry compared to past years. And kind of what we’re um expecting now is that next year there will at least by the end of next year, as far as we know with estimates, there will be a lot of extra capital that banks will have that they will not need to hold. And that will mean too they will have more money for gro, excuse me, more capital for growth as well as buybacks and potentially M&A.