Well, at least the banks are ok. For now.

JPMorgan beat estimates and lifted its full-year NII guide on Friday, as earnings season got underway in the US.

Jamie Dimon, whose televised recession warning reportedly played a role in compelling Donald Trump’s tariff turnabout this week, described an economy “facing considerable turbulence.” There’s friction, Dimon said, between “the potential positives of tax reform and deregulation” and “the potential negatives of tariffs and ‘trade wars.'”

I’d note that there’s nothing “potential” about those latter negatives. We all know how tariffs are going to turn out. Badly. As for tax “reform” (note the scare quotes) and deregulation, to say supply-side economics has a mixed track record would be very, very generous. Dimon also lamented “ongoing sticky inflation, high fiscal deficits and still rather high asset prices and volatility.”

But it’s fine, or should be fine, because JPMorgan was “prepare[d] for a wide range of scenarios” anyway, and in every one of them, the bank rakes in tens of billions of dollars in revenue. Q1 was no exception.

Although no one’s boarding up any windows yet, there’s some evidence that the sand bags are being stacked. The reserve build at JPMorgan was $973 million for Q1 against a release this time last year. At Morgan Stanley, which also reported on Friday, a $135 million provision was double the expected set-aside. JPMorgan cited “changes in the weighted-average macroeconomic outlook.”

“Expect more reserve builds sooner than later,” Mike Mayo, who’s famously not as rich as Dimon, wrote this week, in his big bank earnings preview. “Banks mechanistically factor in higher chance for a recession when calculating CECL loan loss reserves and have a qualitative overlap, which would have been considered even before the April 2 tariff day,” he added.

For now, though, things seem generally calm. Charge-offs, for example, were lower than expected at JPMorgan during Q1.

You’re encouraged to note that banks’ traders tend to do well during market turmoil. Up to a point, anyway. Obviously, Friday’s results don’t capture the post-“Liberation Day” trade, but they do incorporate the volatility around Q1’s “Trump correction.”

JPMorgan’s equities’ traders topped estimates with $3.81 billion in revenue, nearly 50% higher than Q1 of 2024 on “particularly strong performance in derivatives amid elevated levels of volatility.”

At Morgan Stanley, equities trading was likewise strong. $4.13 billion in revenue for Q1 topped estimates by nearly a billion, and rose 45% YoY. The firm cited “strong client activity amid a more volatile trading environment.”

As for IB, JPMorgan’s $2.27 billion was short of the $2.34 billion consensus. Morgan Stanley beat, narrowly, with $1.56 billion in revenue against expectations for $1.51 billion. It probably makes sense to be a little worried about IB going forward, to put it politely. The kind of volatility we saw in recent days is a death knell for some kinds of deals, and if it continues with no Fed bailout, it’ll weigh on debt underwriting and ECM.

We’ll see how it goes. Jeremy Barnum on Friday said JPMorgan’s adopting “a cautious stance” on IB, and said wholesale banking’s in “wait-and-see mode.”

As for the banks’ two big drivers, wealth management at Morgan Stanley was a little short at $7.3 billion in revenue versus $7.44 billion expected, and NII at JPMorgan was $23.38 billion in Q1, flat sequentially, and a touch higher than the Street anticipated.

The full-year NII guide at JPMorgan’s $94.5 billion now, up from the prior guide on Markets.

On the top line, the House of Dimon racked up $46.01 billion in revenue for Q1, well above the $44.39 billion consensus. EPS was $5.07, easily ahead of the $4.61 analysts expected. At Morgan Stanley, overall revenue was $17.7 billion, more than a billion ahead of estimates, and EPS was $2.60.

All in all, these results were fine, but it’s all about the outlook now. The whole world changed this month. Barnum said on the call that JPMorgan’s seeing evidence of front-loaded consumer spending as households are “expecting price increases” tied to the tariffs. “My guess is a lot of companies will remove guidance,” Dimon remarked.