My Focus is on Pretax Income Rather Than on After-Tax Net Income Because Income Taxes are Simply a Transfer of Financial Wealth Between US Corporations and the US Federal, US State and Foreign Governments. It Has Nothing Whatsoever to do with Company Operating Performance.
From a review of SEC filings, the chart below shows the Audited Gold-Standard US GAAP Pretax Income From Continuing Operations for the March 2019 Quarter, the March 2018 Quarter, the December 2018 Quarter and the December 2017 Quarter for each of what are considered by many to be the US Big 6 Financial Companies.
| US | US | US | US | |||||
| GAAP | GAAP | GAAP | GAAP | |||||
| Pretax | Pretax | Pretax | Pretax | |||||
| Income | Income | Income | Income | |||||
| (Loss) | (Loss) | (Loss) | (Loss) | |||||
| March | March | Better | Dec | Dec | Better | |||
| US | 2019 | 2018 | (Worse) | 2018 | 2017 | (Worse) | ||
| State | Quarter | Quarter | % | Quarter | Quarter | % | ||
| HQs | US Big 6 Financial Cos | End | End | Change | End | End | Change | |
| mils $ | mils $ | mils $ | mils $ | |||||
| NY | JPMorgan Chase | 11,233 | 10,682 | 5% | 8,841 | 8,254 | 7% | |
| NC | Bank of America | 8,767 | 8,394 | 4% | 8,698 | 6,161 | 41% | |
| CA | Wells Fargo | 6,848 | 6,701 | 2% | 7,120 | 4,599 | 55% | |
| NY | Citigroup | 6,012 | 6,090 | -1% | 5,306 | 5,099 | 4% | |
| NY | Morgan Stanley | 2,955 | 3,420 | -14% | 1,857 | 2,471 | -25% | |
| NY | Goldman Sachs | 2,719 | 3,419 | -20% | 2,708 | 3,108 | -13% | |
| Total all 6 Cos | 38,534 | 38,706 | -0.4% | 34,530 | 29,692 | 16.3% |
