Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs completed its sale of the GreenSky home improvement lending platform, officially closing the chapter on its consumer lending experiment. The sale came at a significant loss from the original acquisition price, adding to the total tally of losses from the consumer banking push under David Solomon.

Goldman's private credit buildout is underappreciated, they're originating directly and also co-investing alongside their asset management clients in a way that creates fee income on both sides of the transaction. The traditional bank lending model is being disrupted but Goldman is positioning to be a winner in the new private credit ecosystem rather than a loser.

Equities trading revenues have been absolutely on fire and Goldman consistently ranks at the top alongside Morgan Stanley in that business. The derivatives franchise especially benefits when volatility spikes and we've had plenty of that. This is a segment where their talent density is genuinely hard to replicate.

Goldman Sachs was named as a lead advisor on several large sovereign wealth fund transactions in the Middle East this year, continuing to deepen its presence in Gulf capital markets. The firm has been aggressively expanding its Abu Dhabi and Riyadh offices as petrodollar flows into alternative assets accelerate.

What do people think happens to Goldman's trading revenues if the Fed starts a prolonged cutting cycle and the yield curve normalizes? Fixed income trading has been a big beneficiary of the rate volatility environment and I'm wondering if that tailwind fades.

The asset and wealth management segment still isn't generating the fee income they promised when they pivoted the whole strategy. They keep talking about $10B in annual management fees as a target but execution has been lumpy at best. Meanwhile they're sitting on legacy principal investments that are a drag every time private market valuations get marked down.

Does anyone have a good read on how Goldman's transaction banking business is actually scaling? They've been building out cash management and trade finance to compete with JPMorgan and Citi in that space but I never see much detail on it in the earnings calls.

Goldman's investment banking fees were up 24% year-over-year last quarter and the M&A pipeline is starting to look healthy again with rate cuts finally unlocking deal activity. If the IPO window stays open through 2025 this thing prints money. The Marcus consumer banking albatross is gone and management can finally focus on what they actually do well.

The stock is trading at nearly 1.5x book value which is pricing in a lot of good news on the IB recovery. If deal activity disappoints or credit markets seize up for any reason, that premium compresses fast. Morgan Stanley has a more stable wealth management earnings base that justifies a higher multiple in my view.

It's interesting watching Goldman try to build out its alternatives platform to go head to head with Blackstone, Apollo, and KKR for institutional capital. They have the brand and relationships but the dedicated alternatives managers have a structural cost-of-capital advantage since they're not carrying a trading balance sheet. It's a different competitive moat.

David Solomon's leadership has been a persistent overhang — the DJ stuff was silly optics but the real issue is that the Marcus strategy destroyed billions in shareholder value and it happened on his watch. The partner class has been restless and talent retention at the senior level is something you can't always see in the numbers until it's too late.