Wall Street is booming.
Yesterday Goldman Sachs reported its 2Q 2021 revenue, which came in at $15.4bn. That's the second highest Goldman has ever printed, second only to... the first quarter of this year. That means the 152-year-old investment bank has pulled in more than $33bn in the first half of this year, which is more than what it managed for the whole of 2017 ($32bn) — and it's not just Goldman, JP Morgan also reported profits that nearly doubled.
Deals, deals, deals
Modern investment banks do a lot of different things, and for Goldman most of its activities were up. Advising corporates on acquisitions and raising capital was up, investing money on behalf of clients was up and gains made from investing in private companies was way, way up.
The only thing that was actually down for Goldman was its trading biz — the part most people think of when they think of Wall Street. Revenues in its trading division were down 32% relative to last year, but that's partly just because this quarter last year was such a strong one, as everyone made trades to buy, sell or swap their investments during the peak "panic" of the pandemic.
Wall Street to Main Street
When Goldman's CEO isn't spinning records (he has 500k monthly listeners on Spotify), he's working on Goldman's strategy to get you — the everyday consumer — to bank with Goldman. That consumer banking effort brought in $363m in revenue last quarter, just 2% of Goldman's current total. DJ D-Sol will be hoping to pump those numbers up in the future.
