Big Bank Earnings Kick Off Tuesday — What JPMorgan, BofA, Citi, and Wells Fargo Will Tell Us

Four banks, one Tuesday

JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America (BofA), Citigroup (Citi), and Wells Fargo all report second-quarter results before the opening bell on Tuesday, July 14 — unofficially kicking off big-bank earnings season. JPMorgan and Wells Fargo report around 7 a.m. ET, with Bank of America's call following at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Analysts are penciling in year-over-year EPS (earnings per share) growth at all four banks. Estimates cluster around $5.44-$5.50 for JPMorgan, $1.09-$1.13 for Bank of America, $2.62-$2.66 for Citigroup, and roughly $1.72 for Wells Fargo — figures that vary modestly by data provider, as they always do heading into a print.

Big banks reporting first is tradition, not coincidence: their results offer one of the first broad reads on how the economy performed over the past three months, ahead of the flood of other S&P 500 companies reporting over the following six weeks.

What actually moves these stocks

For readers newer to bank earnings, three line items matter more than the EPS headline:

Net interest income (NII) — the spread banks earn between what they pay depositors and what they collect on loans. NII is directly sensitive to the shape of the yield curve — the gap between short- and long-term interest rates — and to loan growth, which makes it the single most rate-sensitive number in a bank's income statement.

Provisions for credit losses — the amount a bank sets aside for loans it expects won't get repaid. Rising provisions are one of the more reliable early signals of stress in consumer or commercial borrowing, well before it shows up in broader economic data.

Trading and investment-banking revenue — a read on capital-markets activity: how much deal-making, underwriting, and client trading volume happened during the quarter. This segment tends to be more volatile than steady, day-to-day lending revenue and swings with broader market conditions.

Pre-earnings previews for this cycle generally expect growth to come mainly from core banking and trading, with loan growth accelerating modestly from Q1's pace and investment-banking activity holding comparatively steady rather than standing out.

Why the Fed backdrop makes this cycle different

The Federal Reserve has now held its benchmark rate at 3.50%-3.75% for four consecutive meetings, most recently at its June 17, 2026 meeting — the first chaired by Kevin Warsh, confirmed by the Senate in May. That in itself wouldn't be especially newsworthy for bank earnings, except for what came with the decision: the Fed's quarterly projections showed the median committee member now expects the rate to end 2026 at 3.8%, up from a 3.4% median projection back in March.

That's a meaningfully different signal than "rates on hold." A rising year-end projection suggests more committee members now see a possible hike as plausible this year, rather than the rate cuts markets had been leaning toward earlier in 2026. The Fed's policy statement accompanying that decision was also notably shorter and dropped language about a bias toward future cuts. Minutes from that same meeting, released July 8, showed committee members split on which direction the rate path should go from here — hardly a settled picture.

The next FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) decision is scheduled for July 28-29, roughly two weeks after these four banks report. That timing matters: NII guidance from JPMorgan, BofA, Citi, and Wells Fargo will be one of the more concrete, real-economy data points investors have to work with heading into that meeting, since bank management teams are typically candid on earnings calls about how they expect the rate environment to affect their businesses over the back half of the year.

Reading the results without overreading them

It's tempting to treat "bank beats, stock pops" or "bank misses, stock drops" as a clean verdict on the economy. In practice, a single quarter's results reflect a mix of factors — some rate-driven, some idiosyncratic to that bank's loan book, cost structure, or trading desk performance — and management guidance on the earnings call often moves the stock more than the reported quarter itself. A beat on trading revenue, for instance, says more about a strong quarter for capital markets than it does about consumer credit health. A jump in credit-loss provisions, similarly, could reflect one bank's specific loan-book exposure rather than an economy-wide trend.

For readers who also trade options around these events: all four stocks typically see elevated implied volatility (the options market's built-in estimate of how much a stock will move) heading into results, followed by the same "volatility crush" that shows up around any earnings report, as that expected-move premium collapses once the news is out — a mechanic explored in more detail in AskProsper's options-education coverage.

This article is educational commentary on public market events, not personalized investment, trading, or tax advice.