Major Banks Releasing Quarterly Results This Week – Starting with JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM)

How will people respond to the release of most major bank earnings this week? Speculation is all over the place as JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) leads things off on Wednesday morning.

Preliminary thoughts are everyone will pick among the data and use them to support their particular viewpoint. Personally I’m a little suspicious of those types of assertions, as it already begins to cloud the reality of where the banking industry stands.

While it’s nothing new for a quarterly earnings report to present things in a positive light while making little of the negative, this is a real possibility this weak, as data will be picked and chosen to be amplified based on past practices.

In other words, we’re already in preliminary positioning before the numbers are even released, in hopes that the confusion and cloudiness surrounding the data will be able to be used – especially by industry supporters – to have what they say stand out in order to keep the negative data suppressed and uncertain as much as possible. These days it’s even worse than normal practices because it’s become a political game now, so we have to be even more vigilant as to the state of individual banks and the overall industry, while all the data is being thrown around.

After JPMorgan releases their numbers on Wednesday, they will be followed by Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Citigroup (NYSE:C) on Thursday, and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) on Friday. The other major player Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) doesn’t report until October 20, which is the following Tuesday.

Industry watchers are estimating that JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs will be profitable for the quarter, although Goldman will probably just barely make a profit, if at all. Citigroup is almost assuredly to lose money for the quarter, and Bank of America could go either way, according to most analysts following the companies.

Some of the particular things being watched for in the banking industry quarterly results will be whether building up reserves has reached its limit, or if that’s going continue on. Looking at the expected horrible condition of commercial real estate is also a major concern and consideration.
 
Other important data to be released on Wednesday includes a retail sales report from the Commerce Department, as well as minutes from the latest meeting of the of the Federal Reserve, which are in reality only partial and what they allow us to see. About the only value they offer is if they present any clues as to the direction they’re going to go with interest rates.