Each quarter, when publicly traded companies report their earnings, they tend to energetically emphasize what’s going well and to glaze over any stumbling blocks.
That will be considerably harder to do this quarter, if the results from Goldman Sachs on Monday are an indication.
Goldman kicked off Wall Street’s parade of first-quarter earnings reports with stern warnings about the impact of the war in Iran. The bank said that in comparison to a few months ago, it detected less enthusiasm from corporate clients for the types of big-money transactions — initial public offerings, mergers and the like — that are the backbone of investment banking.
That meant that although the bank earned a $5.6 billion profit in the first quarter, up roughly 20 percent from the same period a year earlier, its shares dropped 4 percent in premarket trading.
David M. Solomon, Goldman’s chief executive, in a statement described the geopolitical situation as “very complex.”
That is not necessarily bad for business. Goldman’s trading desks earned billions in additional fees from the heightened volatility in oil and other markets, while hedge funds and other professional investors paid the bank more to borrow money and make complicated, expensive bets on the direction of things to come.
Still, the results from currencies and commodities trading, among other areas, came in short of what had been expected.
Investors have remained relatively optimistic despite the daily whiplash of headlines from the Middle East. Most big public companies continue to post steady profits; year-over-year earnings growth for the companies in the S&P 500 is expected to come in around 13 percent for the three months ended in March, which would be the sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth for the index.
Many more big companies are set to report earnings this week, and get quizzed by investors on the effects of the war, including JPMorgan Chase, PepsiCo and Netflix.
Joe Rennison contributed reporting.
Rob Copeland is a finance reporter for The Times, writing about Wall Street and the banking industry.
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