4 Big Banks Score Perfect 61-Day Run-Zero Trading Loss in Q1

It is the Wall Street equivalent of a perfect game of baseball — 27 up, 27 down, the final score measured in millions of dollars a day.

Despite the running unease in world markets, four giants of American finance managed to make money from trading every single day during the first three months of the year.

Their remarkable 61-day streak is one for the record books. Perfect trading quarters on Wall Street are about as rare as perfect games in Major League Baseball. On Sunday, Dallas Braden of the Oakland Athletics pitched what was only the 19th perfect game in baseball history.

But Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Company produced the equivalent of four perfect games during the first quarter. Each one finished the period without losing money for even one day.

Their showing, disclosed in quarterly financial filings, underscored the outsize — and controversial — role that trading has assumed at major financial institutions. It also drives home the widening lead that a handful of big banks are enjoying over lesser rivals on post-bailout Wall Street.

Experts said it would be difficult to repeat such a remarkable feat this quarter. Even so, the performance could feed the debate in Washington over the role of proprietary trading at banks, as well as sometimes conflicted roles banks play as market makers in matching buy and sell orders.

Risk management experts said the four banks, as well as other Wall Street players, reaped big rewards without necessarily placing big bets that stocks or bonds would go up or down. Instead, they mostly played matchmaker, profiting from the difference between the prices at which clients were willing to buy and sell. Banks said that customer order flows were particularly strong during the period.

“This is not about hitting home runs,” said Jaidev Iyer, who runs his own risk management consulting firm, J-Risk Advisors. “This is just, as we call it, milking the market and your captive client base.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/business/12bank.html

Banksters.

 

One hellofa coincidence, don't you think?

 

Where are all these class action suit specialists ? Rainmakers ? Anti trust investigations ?

4 banks - in one quarter ? And surprisingly the big four ? Grrrrr.......

 

Can't fathom "going 61-0" on day trades, let alone 4 OF THE BIGGEST INSTITUTIONS DOING SO AT THE SAME TIME... inside dope, you think? "Frontrunning"?

 

“Our FICC and equities businesses are largely global market-making businesses where we intermediate flows and commit capital and liquidity and in the process generate revenue including bid-offer spreads,” Mr. Cohn said at a UBS conference in New York.

Yeah, sure. Frontrunnig your customer flows. And where have you LOUDMOUTH OF GODLMAN SACHS BEEN ON THURSDAY LAST WEEK ? TAKING LIQUIDITY, HE ?????

 

Don't see the excitement. If someone made $1 a day for 61 days, they would have $61.

Winning percentages have to be one of the least useful measurements in trading.

 

fyi, they are not averaging down the losing trades in order to end up positive each and every day, which is what your statement implies...

they simply know what and when to trade.

iow, they are stealing from the rest of market participants, since they have an unfair advantage

 

Irrelevant. The Banker-boys claim "minimum $5 Million per day, many days >$100 Million.

Is "the excitement" clear to you now?

 

Front-running FX bucketshops have been replaced by the biggest one of all: NYSE/Nasdaq

 

What a joke-- The fix is in.