Bank of America on Tuesday turned in decent results that beat where it counted, although higher expenses and the characteristically prosaic nature of the report had the potential to give investors pause or at least mute the market response.

Most importantly, net interest income beat, at $14.19 billion. That was down 3% YoY but up sequentially. Consensus was looking for a little under $14 billion.

The bank cited higher deposit costs for the YoY decline. The increase from Q4 came courtesy of better yields on assets and income from Global Markets. Both JPMorgan and Wells Fargo underwhelmed with their NII readouts last week.

Analysts will press Alastair Borthwick for a NII guide or at least for guidance. Suffice to say this is a tough forecasting environment given rampant uncertainty around the Fed path.

Non-interest expenses were meaningfully ahead of estimates at $17.2 billion, up 6% YoY, but $700 million of that was the FDIC special assessment. Excluding the cost of “subsidizing the losers” (as Rick Santelli might put it), Brian Moynihan’s expenses rose 2% from the same period a year ago.

Without pretending to be an expert on BofA’s expense management, I’ll quickly note that the “ex-FDIC” (if you will) non-interest expense line, $16.5 billion, looked a little high. Comp costs (“investments in people,” to use BofA’s accidentally dystopian description) were $10.2 billion, up from $9.5 billion the prior quarter and $200 million more than analysts expected.

Trading results were solid in relation to consensus and outright good versus the bank’s own history. FICC revenue of $3.31 billion matched expectations and equities was a beat at $1.87 billion (the Street was looking for $1.71 billion).

IB looked pretty good too. Total fees of $1.6 billion outstripped consensus ($1.3 billion), underscoring one of the key takeaways from Q1 big bank results: There’s a light at the end of the tunnel for IB and it’s not a train. Debt underwriting brought in $885 million for BofA in Q1, much better than the $756 million consensus. Equities underwriting revenue of $363 million was likewise an easy beat (consensus there was $244 million.)

Q1 2024 was the best overall quarter for BofA’s Global Markets segment since Q1 2021, and the best quarter for the bank’s traders in quite a while.

Moynihan noticed. “[Our] sales and trading businesses continued their strong 2023 momentum this quarter, reporting the best first quarter in over a decade,” he said, patting himself on the back in otherwise perfunctory remarks.

Rounding out the results, total deposits of $1.95 trillion were a touch above estimates, the provision (for losses) was lower than expected at $1.32 billion, Wealth was decent with $5.59 billion in revenue (a beat), NPLs rose nearly $400 million QoQ (you can “thank” CRE for that) and total loans were a bit short at $1.05 trillion (analysts wanted $1.06 trillion).

On the top line, adjusted revenue of $25.8 billion was a slight beat, and adjusted EPS of $0.83 was better than the $0.77 consensus.

Bottom line: BofA’s still a going concern. Oh, and the bank’s traders made money every, single day in Q1. There were no loss days for the trading business over the first three months of the year.