Every earnings season starts the same way, with the big banks, and Q3 2026 is no exception. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Citi opened the season on Tuesday, October 13, all before the open. Bank of America and Morgan Stanley finish the kickoff on Wednesday, October 14, also before the open, with BlackRock reporting the same morning. The full schedule sits on the Q3 2026 earnings calendar.

Banks go first because their quarter is the economy in miniature. Net interest income shows what households and businesses are paying to borrow. Provision for credit losses shows what the bank quietly thinks comes next. Investment banking fees show whether dealmaking is alive. When all three point the same way, the rest of the season usually follows.

The bar the openers set

Consensus expectations for the first morning, from FactSet via Barron's, were rich: JPMorgan at $5.93 a share on $51.2 billion of revenue, Goldman Sachs at $12.86 on $16.83 billion, Wells Fargo at $1.85 on $22.3 billion and Citi at $2.65 on $23.7 billion. Those are not soft numbers. A season that starts with banks clearing a bar like that starts confident, and FactSet's blended forecast of roughly 29.5 percent earnings growth for the index says the confidence is supposed to continue.

The two names still to print when this preview was written carry their own tests. Bank of America consensus sits at $1.10 a share on $30.58 billion of revenue (FactSet). Morgan Stanley is the dealmaking read: consensus $2.94 a share on $20.19 billion, and its wealth management machine usually smooths whatever the trading desk does. BlackRock, at a $14.33 consensus, is the asset-management tell: flows follow markets, and markets have been kind.

What to watch in the prints

  • Credit quality. Provisions and charge-offs matter more than the EPS beat. A bank can beat on fees and still be quietly bracing for losses.
  • Guidance on net interest income. The rate path runs through every other sector's quarter. Bank guidance is the first real read on it.
  • Capital markets fees. A strong IPO and M&A quarter at Goldman and Morgan Stanley tends to show up later in the season as confidence everywhere else.
  • The consumer. Card delinquencies at Wells Fargo, Citi and Bank of America are the closest thing to a household stress gauge that prints on schedule.

The insider angle on bank week

Bank executives are heavy, regular filers, and bank week is when their blackout windows lift. The useful habit: after each print, check whether any officer bought in the open market with personal money. Bank CEOs almost never buy their own stock casually; the regulatory glare alone makes an open-market purchase a deliberate statement. Our guide to reading a Form 4 filing in 60 seconds shows how to spot the difference between a real buy and a scheduled plan sale in under a minute.

Congressional trades are the other half of bank week. Financial stocks are among the most traded names in STOCK Act disclosures, and the filings arrive with a lag of up to 45 days, which means the trades members made around bank earnings surface through November. The season hub maps the weeks when those disclosures are likeliest to cluster. If you track congress stock trades seriously, InsiderPulse Pro pushes every filing as it lands instead of in a monthly batch.