Canadian Bank Capital Markets: December’s Growth Rates Will Rank 2025, Not the Desks
Goldman Sachs reported $6.441 billion USD of equities net revenues for the three months to September 30, 72% higher than the same quarter of 2025, while its FICC line came in essentially unchanged at $3.471 billion. JPMorgan Chase, which reported before the open on the same morning, Tuesday October 13, 2026, printed the same shape. Those three months overlap two of the three months in the Canadian banks’ fiscal fourth quarter, which does not close until October 31. So the US desks have described part of the market Canadian bank capital markets desks have been trading in, and not the part still running. How much that is worth differs sharply from bank to bank, and the banks’ own filings say by how much.
The two calendars overlap in August and September
The US banks’ calendar third quarter ran from July 1 to September 30, 2026. The Canadian banks’ fiscal fourth quarter runs from August 1 to October 31, 2026. The overlap is August and September, two of the three months on each side. Two of the three Canadian months are now described by somebody else’s results, October is not described at all, and the Canadian quarter is still open as you read this. That is the measure of what the US numbers are worth here, and it is also the limit of it.
The Canadian banks’ most recently reported quarter is fiscal Q3 2026, which ended July 31 and was released in late August. Every Canadian figure below is from that quarter unless it is marked otherwise.
Equities carried the US quarter and fixed income did not
Both US banks report in US dollars. Goldman’s third quarter 2026 earnings results show net revenues of $18.679 billion, 23% higher than the third quarter of 2025, net earnings of $5.294 billion, diluted earnings per share of $17.01 and an annualized return on equity of 18.7%. Investment banking fees were $3.224 billion, up 21%. The split inside the trading business is the part that travels: equities up 72%, FICC flat.
JPMorgan’s third quarter 2026 earnings release gives reported net revenue of $50.2 billion, up 8%, net income of $15.3 billion, up 6%, diluted earnings per share of $5.57, up 10%, and a return on tangible common equity of 20%. Markets revenue rose 15%, and inside it Equity Markets was $5.0 billion, up 49%, while Fixed Income Markets was $5.4 billion, down 4%. Investment banking fees were $3.0 billion, up 14%. Two independent desks, one split. Jamie Dimon’s comment on the quarter was about the backdrop rather than the trading: “The U.S. economy continued to be fueled by strong business investment and ongoing consumer spending. However, large fiscal deficits, sticky inflation, elevated asset prices, rising interest rates and geopolitical conditions continue to shift under the surface. These forces may be manageable, but we remain prepared for a wide range of outcomes.”
A Canadian capital markets segment is a bundle, not a trading desk
The read is real, but it is not one for one, and the reason sits in how the segment is drawn. A reporting segment is the unit a bank keeps and publishes its books in, and the Canadian capital-markets segments bundle trading together with corporate and investment banking, lending to corporate clients, and advisory and underwriting work. An equities number out of New York speaks to one piece inside that bundle. If the plumbing underneath that is new to you, our guide to reading financial statements sets out the four statements, how they join up, and where and when a company’s reporting appears.
The banks say as much themselves. CIBC’s third quarter 2026 report to shareholders and supplementary pack, at page 2: “Global markets revenue was up primarily driven by higher equity trading and financing revenue. Corporate and investment banking revenue was up primarily due to higher revenue from our lending and deposit activities with our corporate clients, partially offset by lower advisory and equity underwriting revenue in our investment banking business.” One half of the segment rose on equity trading. The other half rose on corporate lending while underwriting fell.
RBC splits the revenue explicitly. Its third quarter 2026 supplementary financial information, page 15, puts Global Markets at $2,152 million, Corporate and Investment Banking at $2,045 million and a residual “Other” line of $15 million, out of $4,212 million of Capital Markets revenue. Our arithmetic makes Global Markets 51.1% of the segment. The same row shows Global Markets at $1,749 million in the October 2025 quarter.
TD prints the cleanest trading figure of the six. Table 10 of its third quarter 2026 earnings news release gives trading-related revenue (TEB) of $975 million against total Wholesale Banking revenue of $2,581 million, which is 37.8% on our arithmetic. TD labels that measure non-GAAP. Its footnote 3 splits the $975 million into net interest income (TEB) of negative $175 million and trading income of $1,150 million.
What sits inside the bundle is also where the US read runs out. Scotiabank’s quarter was driven, in its own words, by “record underwriting and advisory fees”, which is issuance and advice rather than trading. CIBC’s corporate and investment banking revenue rose on “lending and deposit activities with our corporate clients” while advisory and equity underwriting fell, so the half of that segment that moved was the lending half. At RBC, Corporate and Investment Banking is $2,045 million of a $4,212 million revenue line, almost half of it. Canadian equity and debt issuance, Government of Canada rate activity and lending to Canadian corporates are not things a Goldman equities number speaks to.
Which leaves a grouping, and it is a qualitative one, taken from how each bank described its own quarter rather than from any common measure. CIBC put its global markets line down to “higher equity trading and financing revenue”. National Bank attributed a 34% rise in segment revenue to “strong growth in global markets revenues”. BMO’s segment reflected “higher revenue in Global Markets and Investment and Corporate Banking”. Those are the three whose own account of the quarter names the part of the bundle a strong equities tape speaks to. Scotiabank’s record quarter, in its own account, came from underwriting and advisory fees, which the same tape reaches far less directly.
How much of each bank the segment actually is
Here is the dependence, on our arithmetic over the banks’ own fiscal Q3 2026 segment figures. The denominator is the sum of each bank’s named operating segments and excludes the corporate line, which is the honest basis for comparing six banks: BMO’s corporate line that quarter carried a $962 million charge on the announced sale of its Transportation Finance and Vendor Finance businesses, and that would distort any whole-bank denominator.
| Bank | Segment net income | Operating segments total | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Bank | 442 | 1,343 | 32.9% |
| CIBC | 722 | 2,609 | 27.7% |
| Royal Bank | 1,544 | 6,042 | 25.6% |
| BMO | 645 | 2,901 | 22.2% |
| Scotiabank | 647 | 3,002 | 21.6% |
| TD | 743 | 4,753 | 15.6% |
Reported net income, fiscal Q3 2026, millions of Canadian dollars. The segment is Capital Markets at Royal Bank, CIBC, BMO and National Bank, Wholesale Banking at TD, and Global Banking and Markets at Scotiabank.
Capital-markets segment net income as a share of operating-segment net income, fiscal Q3 2026. Our arithmetic on segment figures from each bank’s own Q3 2026 earnings release and supplementary financial information, quarter ended July 31, 2026.
Every one of the six grew that segment year over year in the quarter to July 31, several of them hard. TD’s Wholesale Banking net income rose 87% to $743 million. BMO’s Capital Markets rose 46% to $645 million, which its third quarter 2026 earnings release attributed to “higher revenue in Global Markets and Investment and Corporate Banking, and a lower provision for credit losses, partially offset by higher expenses”. Scotiabank’s third quarter 2026 press release called Global Banking and Markets “record earnings of $647 million, up 37% year-over-year”. CIBC’s Capital Markets rose 34% to $722 million, National Bank’s 32% to $442 million on revenue of $1,041 million, and RBC’s 16% to $1,544 million. Those shares are one quarter’s snapshot, and a segment’s share of net income moves with provisions as well as with revenue, as BMO’s own explanation shows.
At no bank is the segment more than a third of operating-segment earnings, so most of what these shares are worth sits elsewhere in the business. Our page on Canadian bank stocks covers the six on that wider basis.
The six banks are not lapping the same base
Dependence tells you who feels a strong trading quarter. It does not tell you what the December headline will look like, because the growth rate each bank prints is its fiscal Q4 2026 against its fiscal Q4 2025, and those 2025 bases differ in a way that has nothing to do with how any desk traded this year.
Take each bank’s fiscal Q3 2026 capital-markets net income and assume the segment simply repeats it in fiscal Q4. This is arithmetic on two published figures, not a forecast. Nothing here predicts what any bank will earn.
| Bank | Q4/25 base | Q3/26 run rate | y/y if Q4 repeats Q3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| TD | 494 | 743 | +50.4% |
| CIBC | 548 | 722 | +31.8% |
| Scotiabank | 519 | 647 | +24.7% |
| BMO | 521 | 645 | +23.8% |
| Royal Bank | 1,431 | 1,544 | +7.9% |
| National Bank | 432 | 442 | +2.3% |
Reported capital-markets segment net income, millions of Canadian dollars. BMO’s $521 million base is from its fourth quarter 2025 earnings release; National Bank’s figures are from its third quarter 2026 supplementary financial information, page 10.
Capital-markets segment net income, fiscal Q4 2025 against fiscal Q3 2026. Q3 2026 figures from each bank’s Q3 2026 supplementary financial information or earnings release; Q4 2025 bases from the same supplementary packs, except BMO’s, which is from its Q4 2025 earnings release.
The spread is the point. Each bank doing no more than repeating its own July quarter would produce headline growth rates ranging from +2% to +50%. That ordering broadly inverts the dependence ordering, with two clean endpoints: TD is last of the six on capital-markets dependence at 15.6% and first on this arithmetic at +50.4%, and National Bank is first on dependence at 32.9% and last on the arithmetic at +2.3%. The middle of the table is looser, with CIBC second on both measures and BMO fourth on both. National Bank’s position says nothing about its desk. It earned $432 million in the October 2025 quarter, within $10 million of the $442 million it earned this July, so there is almost no gap to grow into. Reading the December growth rates as a ranking of how well the desks traded gets it backwards.
Repeating fiscal Q3 is not a neutral assumption either, and the path through fiscal 2026 says why. Capital-markets segment net income by quarter, in millions of Canadian dollars:
| Bank | Q1/26 | Q2/26 | Q3/26 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Bank | 1,478 | 1,484 | 1,544 |
| TD | 561 | 612 | 743 |
| CIBC | 877 | 792 | 722 |
| Scotiabank | 544 | 457 | 647 |
| BMO | 657 | 638 | 645 |
| National Bank | 443 | 488 | 442 |
From each bank’s Supplementary Financial Information for Q3 2026, except BMO’s, whose Q1 2026 figure is from its Q1 2026 earnings release and whose Q2 and Q3 2026 figures are from its Q3 2026 Report to Shareholders.
For TD, the assumption extrapolates a line that has risen three quarters running, from 494 last October to 561, 612 and 743. For CIBC it extrapolates the weakest quarter of its fiscal year so far, off a line that has fallen in both quarters since the first: 877, then 792, then 722. That is where the repeat assumption is on its thinnest ground, and it is the assumption that is soft rather than the 31.8% it produces. Two of the six series climbed in every quarter of fiscal 2026, TD’s and RBC’s, and TD’s is much the steeper of the two.
For scale on what the step from the July quarter to the October quarter looked like last time, every one of the six earned more in its October 2025 quarter than in its July 2025 quarter: National Bank 334 to 432 (+29.3%), TD 398 to 494 (+24.1%), BMO 442 to 521 (+17.9%), Scotiabank 473 to 519 (+9.7%), RBC 1,328 to 1,431 (+7.8%) and CIBC 540 to 548 (+1.5%), all in millions. That is one year, not a pattern. Fiscal Q4 is also the year-end quarter.
All six rose in Toronto on Tuesday
The S&P/TSX Composite closed Tuesday October 13 at 35,983.98, up 0.90% from Friday October 9’s 35,664.60, with Thanksgiving Monday a closure in between. TD gained 2.22%, National Bank 2.15%, Scotiabank 1.83%, CIBC 1.81%, BMO 1.33% and Royal Bank 1.27%. On our index attribution, built from iShares XIC holdings weights times each name’s return, the six together contributed 39.2 basis points of the Composite’s 89.6 basis point gain, which is 43.8% of the index move from six names. Energy contributed more: 44.0 basis points. Market data as of the October 13, 2026 close. The rest of that session, sector by sector, is in our report on Tuesday’s TSX.
Two bands are worth setting beside each other. The market marked all six of these banks up on Tuesday inside a spread of about one percentage point, from Royal Bank’s 1.27% to TD’s 2.22%. The December arithmetic above, on the same six names, spans +2.3% to +50.4%.
Scotiabank and BMO open the Canadian reporting on December 2
Scotiabank and BMO both report fiscal Q4 2026 on Wednesday December 2, ahead of the rest. Royal Bank, TD and CIBC all report on Thursday December 3, RBC at 8:30 a.m. ET and CIBC at 7:30 a.m. ET. National Bank reports on Friday December 4. Five of those dates were read from each bank’s own investor relations page on October 3, 2026, and BMO’s is from the “Upcoming Events” list in its Q2 2026 earnings release. When they arrive, the figure worth reading first is the segment’s dollars, not the percentage beside it. The base-against-run-rate table above is the scorecard to check them against: six fiscal 2025 bases and six July run rates, already published and already fixed, waiting on the real numbers over those three days.
Disclaimer: The content on bestcanadianstocks.ca is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. Canadian bank segment figures are each bank’s own reported net income for fiscal Q3 2026, the quarter ended July 31, 2026, read from its earnings release, Report to Shareholders or Supplementary Financial Information; fiscal Q4 2025 bases come from the same documents, except BMO’s, which is from its Q4 2025 earnings release. US figures are from Goldman Sachs’ and JPMorgan Chase’s own Q3 2026 earnings releases filed with the SEC and are in US dollars. Share-of-segment percentages and the year-over-year figures implied by repeating fiscal Q3 are our arithmetic on those published figures and are not printed in any filing. Market data as of the October 13, 2026 close; index contributions are each holding’s iShares XIC fund weight times its price return.
