Citigroup, for its part, said profits plunged 36% in the second quarter as weakness in the bank’s trading business dampened earnings from its personal banking and wealth management.
US consumers continue to have a healthy balance sheet, the banks said, but warned that spending is slowing and there has been a modest deterioration in some consumer debt.
“The US economy remains resilient,” JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said. However, he added that consumers are “slowly depleting their cash reserves.”
In a conference call, the chief financial officer of the largest US bank, Jeremy Barnum, said demand for loan growth is muted, apart from the cards and autos segments.
He also specified that the bank is seeing “green shoots” in trade and investment banking, but that it is still too early to speak of a trend.
Concerns about the health of the US economy have grown in a context of aggressive rate hikes by the Federal Reserve and high inflation. Investors fear high rates will push the economy into recession, but the outlook remains uncertain.
Wells Chief Executive Charlie Scharf said the range of scenarios for the economy should narrow in coming quarters. So far it is performing better than many expected, but the slowdown is likely to continue.
Wells Fargo said that consumer credit cancellations, that is, debts that a bank has written off and does not expect to recover, continued to deteriorate modestly.
