Wall Street Since 2008
How has Wall Street changed since 2008? Are the banks bigger or smaller? Are they more risky or less risky? What do the markets think of the Wall Street banks? This post answers a few of those questions.
Assets
Since the financial crisis of 2007-08, the megabanks have seen a sharp increase in assets, while the other lenders generally have declined or held about steady overall.
Deposits
They’ve also seen a sharp increase in deposits compared to the other banks. (We haven’t yet found listings for credit union deposits since 1995.)
Derivatives
Derivatives in the 3 largest banks skyrocketed prior to the financial crisis (and were one key part of the crisis). Since then they’ve started to taper off. What’s worrisome, though, is that the derivatives exposure in these 3 banks is nearly 25 times larger than it was in 1995, and about one-fourth of the total $700 trillion global derivatives exposure is in these three banks.
JPMorgan: $72T
Citi: $57T
Bank of America: $44T
We would have added Goldman Sachs to the list, which also has a large derivatives exposure ($41 trillion), but the FDIC only has data on Goldman from 2008 on, since that’s when Goldman became a bank holding company. You can look up each bank’s derivatives here.
Stock Market Capitalization
What has the market thought of Wall Street since 2008? Basically, they know that Bank of America and Citi are still junk, while they still mostly trust JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs.
JPMorgan Chase
Bank of America
Citi
Wells Fargo
Goldman Sachs
(Snapshots from Yahoo.)
Hopefully this data helps you get a clearer sense of the Wall Street markets since the crisis. We’re concerned primarily about the rise in derivatives and the concentration of banking power, as we discuss here and elsewhere.
We’re going to keep adding data so we can give an honest representation of what’s happening on Wall Street. We’ll add changes in employment to this list soon. What else should we add?
