WhatsApp, Monkey Bar, Buffett: Banking’s 2022 Winners and Losers

tech.hindustantimes.com:

While capital markets sputtered for much of the year, volatility pushed trading revenues to their highest levels in well over a decade. With inflation running at a 40-year high, banks were forced to set aside billions in credit reserves. That hindered profits even as the Federal Reserve's campaign to tamp down prices — marked by aggressive rate hikes — boosted net interest income for the country's largest lenders.

Along the way, firms cajoled even more of their staffers back to the office. Job cuts hit the cryptocurrency and fintech industries, which had long been recruiting workers away from Wall Street. And, following a sweeping probe, regulators cracked down on bankers using messaging apps for banter and other business communications.

Here's a look at this year's winners and losers across the US finance industry:

Winners: Macro Traders

Wall Street's biggest trading desks are set to notch $109.6 billion in revenue for the year, the best performance since 2009. Most of that will come from fixed-income trading desks, where volatility handed commodities, currencies and rates traders one of their busiest years ever.

Nowhere is this more evident than at JPMorgan Chase & Co., where revenue is expected to jump 6.5% to $29.2 billion, the biggest haul among the five largest Wall Street banks. That includes a whopping $18.8 billion from fixed-income trading. That business got a new leader this year in Pranav Thakur, a 15-year veteran of the bank who previously oversaw foreign-exchange and emerging-markets trading globally.

Citigroup Inc.'s traders, led by Andy Morton, are set to hand the bank their second-best performance of any year dating back to 2009, an especially impressive feat given the bank's push to rein in risk