Trading assets held by the largest U.S. banks have surged to $3.7 trillion in the second quarter of 2026, more than doubling since the end of 2019, according to a new analysis published this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The sharp rise marks a dramatic expansion of market-making and securities-trading activities at the eight institutions designated as global systemically important banks, or GSIBs. These trading portfolios now represent roughly 20% of all assets on the books of these banking giants, which include JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Bank of America.
The growth has accelerated sharply in recent quarters, with trading assets climbing from $2.5 trillion at the end of 2024 to the current $3.7 trillion figure. Revenue from trading operations reached $117 billion in 2025, the St. Louis Fed report notes, accounting for the majority of income these banks generate from capital markets work. That figure represents a substantial rebound from 2022, when trading revenue had fallen to $62 billion. Trading assets are securities banks hold with the intention of reselling them quickly to capture profits from short-term price swings, and they're recorded at current market value on balance sheets. The portfolios can contain U.S. Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities, foreign exchange and interest rate contracts, stocks, loans, derivatives, and other instruments.
The report explains that trading book size is directly tied to the overall scale of debt and equity markets, which determine how many assets are available to trade. U.S. stock market capitalization stood at $75.3 trillion as of July 1, 2026, while outstanding U.S. fixed-income securities totaled $51.4 trillion in the second quarter of the same year, both having expanded rapidly in recent years. According to the analysis, a regulatory shift in November 2025 also played a crucial role: federal banking regulators modified enhanced supplementary leverage ratio standards, which lowered capital requirements for the GSIB holding companies and their bank subsidiaries. This rule change gave these firms greater ability to grow their balance sheets and expand trading operations.
The regulatory adjustment appears to have unlocked significant capacity for these institutions to increase their market presence. By reducing the amount of capital banks must hold against certain exposures, the modified leverage standards effectively allowed GSIBs to take on more trading positions without violating capital rules. Combined with booming stock and bond markets, this created conditions for the surge in trading assets observed over the past year and a half. While most U.S. banks hold primarily loans and investment securities, the eight GSIBs operate with a distinctly different profile, dedicating substantial portions of their portfolios to active trading. The rise in trading assets underscores how capital markets activity has become central to the business model of America's most complex financial institutions.