Wall Street banks crushing earnings on trading boom — ride the momentum in JPMorgan and Goldman

Verdict: the banks earned the hype, but the entry isn't authorized yet

**Verdict: the earnings thesis is real, but the trade isn't armed yet — wait.** The strongest point for this idea is the freshest evidence: record stock-trading revenue per the July 14 Bloomberg reports is confirmed by SEC filings — JPM net income up 28.3% quarter-over-quarter to $21.2B, GS up 17.7% to $6.6B, and WFC up 22.0% to $6.4B — plus dividend hikes (GS +38.5%, JPM +13.2%) that signal management confidence. The strongest point against is the filings covering the quarter ended June 30: insiders net *sold* roughly $29.3M in GS across 13 holders and $6.6M in JPM across 23 holders — selling into the very boom the thesis rides — alongside WFC's overbought RSI of 74.3. The realized track is real but ugly underneath: 19.2% over 60 months on 297 trades comes with a 43.8% win rate and a 14.4% max drawdown, and the live paper account has made just 0.07% on 8 trades since July 14. Mechanically, GS is above its 20-day EMA but JPM is $2.62 below $356.13, and the volume gate is unconfirmed for both — so no entry rule is fully authorized. A confirmed JPM reclaim of $356.13 with volume data back online would flip this toward a rule-authorized entry; a close through JPM support at $350.18 would kill the setup.

Trade now: waiting on the volume trigger, not chasing

**The setup is not live yet.** The strategy is an on-balance-volume/VWAP/EMA momentum entry on GS and JPM, and the volume leg is the gate: the on-balance volume reading is not currently reportable for either name, so no entry rule has all of its conditions in place. On GS ($1,036.53), the price conditions are already met — both the open and the close sit above the 20-day EMA of $1,033.84, about $2.69 above it. On JPM ($353.51), price is close but on the wrong side: it is $2.62 *below* the 20-day EMA of $356.13, so both price conditions are marked near rather than met. WFC is not a trade symbol in the active rule set and is watched only for context. **What waiting means concretely:** hold off until on-balance volume data confirms above zero and JPM closes back above $356.13. Chasing GS today would mean taking a position the entry rules haven't authorized. If you must express the momentum thesis, GS is the only name already above its 20-day EMA — but the discipline here is to let the full condition set trigger, because the strategy's edge is measured only on its own signals. **Risk and reward are fixed by the rules.** Position risk is capped at 2.4% of equity per trade, with a hard stop at a 2.4% loss and a take-profit at a 4.8% gain — a built-in 2:1 reward-to-risk ratio — plus trailing exits when price closes below VWAP or crosses back through the rank-2 support level. The realized paper track (live since July 14) is modest so far: 8 trades, +0.07% on a $10,000 account, with a 10.1% maximum drawdown. The 60-month simulated window returned 19.2% over 297 trades with a 43.8% win rate — a record where the 2:1 payoff asymmetry, not the hit rate, does the work. One caveat on exits: stops in the simulation were filled on daily bars, so drawdown figures are approximate and should be treated as coarse. **The bottom line:** the momentum backdrop is supportive — GS is 9.1% off its range high and holding above its 20-day EMA — but one gate (volume confirmation) and one price level ($356.13 on JPM) stand between you and a rule-authorized entry. Wait for both, size at 2.4% risk, and respect the 2.4% stop.

Record trading quarters and a 60-month paper track that actually went live

This idea is a long swing play on JPM, GS, and WFC entering after post-earnings gaps with heavy volume, and the fresh fundamental picture genuinely backs the earnings thesis. Per the Bloomberg pieces from July 14, 2026, JPMorgan posted a record profit with stock-trading revenue up 86%, and Goldman broke its own stock-trading revenue record. The SEC filings confirm the news flow is real, not narrative: JPM's quarterly net income jumped 28.3% quarter-over-quarter to $21.2B, Goldman's rose 17.7% to $6.6B, and Wells Fargo's climbed 22.0% to $6.4B. All three beat into the same quarter, which is exactly the setup the strategy wants to harvest. The profitability trend is also accelerating, not fading. Goldman's return on equity moved up 17.8% in the quarter to 5.4% while shrinking shares outstanding by 1.1% to 291.4M — a buyback flywheel. JPM's ROE rose 24.6% to 5.6% and full-year ROE sits at 15.7%, in the 86th percentile of the Financials sector. Goldman's most recent annual dividend rose 38.5%, and JPM raised its payout 13.2% to $4.50 per share for 2026 — management signaling confidence in the cycle. Unlike most ideas of this type, there is a realized paper-track record to read, and it supports the mechanism. The simulated 60-month run on the daily timeframe produced 297 trades with a 19.2% total return and a 43.8% win rate, with the best recent stretch coming in the last year of the window — the equity curve moves from roughly -14% in mid-2023 to +19% by the end of the window, meaning the setup has been working in exactly the kind of active-markets regime the July 2026 earnings reports describe. The 24-month window corroborates rather than contradicts: 139 trades, an 18.1% return, and a shallower 7.7% max drawdown — the recent regime is the strongest part of the track. If trading revenues are indeed running at record levels per Bloomberg, the earnings-gap catalyst the strategy keys on should keep appearing…

Scores

• Conviction score breakdown: 53
• Thesis support: 75
• Trade readiness: 35
• Risk quality: 40
• Backtest evidence: 45
• Fundamentals trend: 70

Watch items

• JPM — Price vs 20-day EMA
• GS — OBV
• JPM — OBV
• GS — Nearest resistance
• JPM — Nearest support
• WFC — RSI (14)
• GS — Insider net open-market flow