Earnings Season Heats Up Tomorrow

Alcoa (NYSE: AA) unofficially kicked off second-quarter earnings season on Monday. But things won’t really heat up until tomorrow.

Two of the big banks – JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) – report earnings on Friday. For JPMorgan, it might not be pretty.

The nation’s largest bank reported several billion dollars in losses thanks to some very bad trades by the so-called “London Whale” – a rogue, London-based derivatives trader whose wayward trades sent the stock tumbling and forced CEO Jamie Dimon to appear before Congress. Tomorrow we’ll find out just how great those losses were.

Thankfully, the forecast is much sunnier for Wells Fargo. Analysts are predicting big things for firms with a strong mortgage-banking presence – which Wells Fargo has in spades. Wells Fargo also carries some momentum from last earnings season, when it was the only one of the six major banks to see its profits increase year over year.

Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), however, might not be so fortunate given the volatile marketplace.

Goldman Sachs reports earnings on Tuesday. Morgan Stanley faces the music next Thursday.

Citigroup (NYSE: C) is the next major financial institution to report earnings after JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Its earnings announcement is slated for Monday.

Rounding out the big banks, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) will report next Wednesday. Like Wells Fargo, a substantial portion of BAC’s business is tied to the mortgage-banking industry – something that could bode well for the bank’s second-quarter profits.

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