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Big bank earnings shock: bank stocks at -6.1%!

Industry · Oct 15, 2026 · 3 min read · Updated Nov 5, 2026

TL;DR

Over the last 20 trading sessions, the big US bank stocks we track returned -6.1%. The market fell far less. Earnings mostly beat expectations; the shares slid anyway. Wells Fargo held up best, Bank of America worst.

Good results, falling shares: the group lagged the market

Three of the biggest US banks reported their Q3 2026 results on Oct. 13. Several of them beat what analysts had been looking for. Their shares slid anyway.

Big bank stocks against the market
Both lines end below where they started, but the bank basket ends at its lowest point on 2026-10-23.
Data table
dateseriesvalueseries_role
2026-08-10Industry basket0.0%target
2026-08-11Industry basket0.3%target
2026-08-12Industry basket1.6%target
2026-08-13Industry basket1.1%target
2026-08-14Industry basket1.6%target
2026-08-17Industry basket0.7%target
2026-08-18Industry basket0.8%target
2026-08-19Industry basket-1.3%target
2026-08-20Industry basket-3.5%target
2026-08-21Industry basket-3.1%target
2026-08-24Industry basket-2.3%target
2026-08-25Industry basket-1.9%target
2026-08-26Industry basket-1.8%target
2026-08-27Industry basket-2.6%target
2026-08-28Industry basket-1.4%target
2026-08-31Industry basket-2.0%target
2026-09-01Industry basket-1.7%target
2026-09-02Industry basket-0.4%target
2026-09-03Industry basket0.9%target
2026-09-04Industry basket0.7%target
2026-09-08Industry basket-0.5%target
2026-09-09Industry basket0.4%target
2026-09-10Industry basket0.3%target
2026-09-11Industry basket0.9%target
2026-09-14Industry basket-1.8%target
2026-09-15Industry basket-1.3%target
2026-09-16Industry basket-3.5%target
2026-09-17Industry basket-3.5%target
2026-09-18Industry basket-4.0%target
2026-09-21Industry basket-3.0%target
2026-09-22Industry basket-6.0%target
2026-09-23Industry basket-6.7%target
2026-09-24Industry basket-6.5%target
2026-09-25Industry basket-5.3%target
2026-09-28Industry basket-7.4%target
2026-09-29Industry basket-7.9%target
2026-09-30Industry basket-8.8%target
2026-10-01Industry basket-9.3%target
2026-10-02Industry basket-9.0%target
2026-10-05Industry basket-8.6%target
2026-10-06Industry basket-8.5%target
2026-10-07Industry basket-9.5%target
2026-10-08Industry basket-8.7%target
2026-10-09Industry basket-7.5%target
2026-10-12Industry basket-7.0%target
2026-10-13Industry basket-9.5%target
2026-10-14Industry basket-10.7%target
2026-10-15Industry basket-9.8%target
2026-10-16Industry basket-9.2%target
2026-10-19Industry basket-11.0%target
2026-10-20Industry basket-10.5%target
2026-10-21Industry basket-10.2%target
2026-10-22Industry basket-10.0%target
2026-10-23Industry basket-11.1%target
2026-08-10Market benchmark0.0%benchmark
2026-08-11Market benchmark-0.3%benchmark
2026-08-12Market benchmark-0.1%benchmark
2026-08-13Market benchmark0.6%benchmark
2026-08-14Market benchmark0.4%benchmark
2026-08-17Market benchmark-0.0%benchmark
2026-08-18Market benchmark-0.7%benchmark
2026-08-19Market benchmark-0.5%benchmark
2026-08-20Market benchmark-1.3%benchmark
2026-08-21Market benchmark-0.9%benchmark
2026-08-24Market benchmark-1.2%benchmark
2026-08-25Market benchmark-0.9%benchmark
2026-08-26Market benchmark-0.9%benchmark
2026-08-27Market benchmark-0.3%benchmark
2026-08-28Market benchmark-0.5%benchmark
2026-08-31Market benchmark-0.8%benchmark
2026-09-01Market benchmark-1.5%benchmark
2026-09-02Market benchmark-1.0%benchmark
2026-09-03Market benchmark0.0%benchmark
2026-09-04Market benchmark-0.4%benchmark
2026-09-08Market benchmark-0.9%benchmark
2026-09-09Market benchmark-1.4%benchmark
2026-09-10Market benchmark-2.0%benchmark
2026-09-11Market benchmark-1.1%benchmark
2026-09-14Market benchmark-1.6%benchmark
2026-09-15Market benchmark-2.0%benchmark
2026-09-16Market benchmark-2.5%benchmark
2026-09-17Market benchmark-1.3%benchmark
2026-09-18Market benchmark-1.2%benchmark
2026-09-21Market benchmark0.3%benchmark
2026-09-22Market benchmark0.3%benchmark
2026-09-23Market benchmark-0.4%benchmark
2026-09-24Market benchmark-0.5%benchmark
2026-09-25Market benchmark0.0%benchmark
2026-09-28Market benchmark-0.7%benchmark
2026-09-29Market benchmark-0.9%benchmark
2026-09-30Market benchmark-1.1%benchmark
2026-10-01Market benchmark-0.9%benchmark
2026-10-02Market benchmark-0.2%benchmark
2026-10-05Market benchmark0.5%benchmark
2026-10-06Market benchmark1.0%benchmark
2026-10-07Market benchmark0.8%benchmark
2026-10-08Market benchmark0.4%benchmark
2026-10-09Market benchmark1.0%benchmark
2026-10-12Market benchmark0.9%benchmark
2026-10-13Market benchmark0.9%benchmark
2026-10-14Market benchmark-0.2%benchmark
2026-10-15Market benchmark0.1%benchmark
2026-10-16Market benchmark-1.0%benchmark
2026-10-19Market benchmark-0.6%benchmark
2026-10-20Market benchmark-0.3%benchmark
2026-10-21Market benchmark0.3%benchmark
2026-10-22Market benchmark-0.9%benchmark
2026-10-23Market benchmark-1.4%benchmark

Over those 20 trading sessions, the of big US bank stocks returned -6.1%. Over the same 20 sessions, the market returned -1.5%. The gap between the two over the same 20 sessions is -4.7%. The basket holds 4 banks, each given the same weight. All the price figures in this note run through 2026-10-23, the last date in our data.

Glossary
basket
A small made-up group of stocks treated as one line, so you can see how an industry moved. Here each bank counts the same amount.
benchmark
A broad measure of the whole stock market, used as the yardstick. A stock that beats it did better than simply owning the market.

Inside the group, the spread between banks was huge

Now look inside the group over a longer stretch. Over the longer 60-session window, the same basket returned -8.5%. The market benchmark returned 2.7% over that longer window. So the weakness was not a single bad morning.

Four banks, four very different results
Wells Fargo held up best over the longer window; Bank of America fell the most of the four.
Data table
nameretseries_role
Wells Fargo-3.0%peer
JPMorgan Chase-5.0%peer
Citigroup-8.4%peer
Bank of America-17.7%peer

The four members did not move together at all. Wells Fargo returned -3.0% over the longer window. Bank of America returned -17.7% over the same window. My reading: a basket line is not each member's line, and one very weak name can pull the average far below the typical bank in it. A comparison across these four banks is not available in our data.

Glossary
price-to-earnings
A stock's price divided by the profit it earns per share. It is a rough gauge of how much investors are paying for each unit of profit.

How far did the weakest of these four big banks fall over the longer window?

Show answer

-17.7% Bank of America returned -17.7% over the same window. That is the surprise: these banks are often lumped together, yet the worst of the four lost many times what the best one lost.

The day-after move was small, not dramatic

Zoom in on the days right around the news. The median move against the market from the day of the news was 0.2%. Wells Fargo was the strongest, at 1.7%. Bank of America was the weakest, at -1.4%. In plain words: in the days around the results, most of these banks moved roughly in line with the market.

The report said 「mixed guidance on rates and dealmaking leading shares to fall despite several beats」. My reading: the beats were largely expected already, so the weakness you see on the first chart built up over weeks in the same period rather than in one session. The gap between the group and the market is the thing to keep an eye on.

Risks

  • An equal-weight basket of four names is not the whole US banking industry.
  • A shared drop can come from the whole market, not from banks alone.
  • One member can dominate a small basket, so the average can mislead.

Sources

  1. FinMind USStockPrice SPY — data as of 2026-10-23; fetched 2026-10-25 05:39 UTC; License note: FinMind open data; original source TWSE/TPEx or US exchanges
  2. FinMind USStockPrice BAC — data as of 2026-10-23; fetched 2026-10-25 05:39 UTC; License note: FinMind open data; original source TWSE/TPEx or US exchanges
  3. FinMind USStockPrice C — data as of 2026-10-23; fetched 2026-10-25 05:39 UTC; License note: FinMind open data; original source TWSE/TPEx or US exchanges
  4. FinMind USStockPrice JPM — data as of 2026-10-23; fetched 2026-10-25 05:39 UTC; License note: FinMind open data; original source TWSE/TPEx or US exchanges
  5. FinMind USStockPrice WFC — data as of 2026-10-23; fetched 2026-10-25 05:39 UTC; License note: FinMind open data; original source TWSE/TPEx or US exchanges