The big beat came from trading.
What it implies is people were expecting a strong number and maybe this isn't as strong as they hoped. They beat expectations and my own estimate, but we need more information.
The big concern was would the revenues come through amid all the turmoil. It appears it has. Generally, it was a pretty good quarter, though it's not a Goldman- or Lehman-strength quarter.
My own concern is does the consumer give out and drag down the economy in 2006? The corporate sector is well into a recovery, but the consumer never had a recession.
In an ideal world, I wish they didn't have [the Discover card]. It gave the bank some support during the stock market downturn, but now it's lagging behind.
This suggests the (capital markets) environment was even better than we thought macro-wise.
Raised the bar up a little higher.
Bank of America has now become a scale player in credit cards. The more accounts and balances you can spread over your essentially fixed-cost process system, the better the economics get.
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