When Goldman Sachs reports first-quarter 2026 earnings on April 13, it will do more than kick off bank earnings season. It will deliver the first real test of whether the firm’s aggressive pivot away from consumer banking and back toward its Wall Street roots is producing durable results, or whether last year’s strong finish was a one-off fueled by favorable markets.
The timing is pointed. Goldman’s stock surged through much of 2025 on the strength of a blockbuster fourth quarter, powered by a wave of mergers, IPO activity, and active trading desks, as the Associated Press reported. But the first months of 2026 have introduced a different environment: volatile equity markets, shifting interest rate expectations, and an evolving trade policy landscape that has complicated the outlook for Wall Street’s biggest revenue engines. Investors are now asking whether Goldman’s momentum survived the turn of the calendar.
Goldman reports ahead of JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup, meaning its numbers and management commentary will set the tone for the entire sector. That makes April 13 a high-stakes morning not just for Goldman shareholders but for anyone trying to read the health of the broader financial system.
A regulatory slate that is mostly, but not entirely, clean
Goldman enters this earnings cycle with several long-running regulatory problems formally resolved. In December 2025, the Federal Reserve Board terminated a cease-and-desist order it had imposed on the firm in October 2020. That order, tied to compliance deficiencies the Fed considered serious enough to warrant formal enforcement, had hung over Goldman for more than five years. Its removal, effective December 4, 2025, signals that regulators judged the firm’s corrective work sufficient on those specific issues.
A separate SEC enforcement action was resolved well before the current reporting period. In 2023, the agency ordered Goldman to pay $6 million for years of deficient “blue sheet” trading data, the transaction records broker-dealers submit to regulators for surveillance and investigations. The SEC found Goldman’s submissions contained errors affecting millions of trades. A related FINRA settlement accompanied the penalty. The dollar figure was modest relative to Goldman’s revenue, but the case exposed weaknesses in internal data controls, the kind of operational shortfall that can invite ongoing supervisory attention long after the fine is paid.
The messiest chapter involves the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB ordered Apple and Goldman Sachs to pay more than $89 million over alleged failures in Apple Card billing dispute handling and refund processes. But the agency’s own disclosure page notes that the order was subsequently terminated and that alleged non-compliance was waived. The public record does not fully explain why. Whether Goldman’s remediation satisfied the agency, whether legal challenges played a role, or whether shifting enforcement priorities at the CFPB factored in remains unclear. So does the question of whether any portion of the $89 million was ultimately collected. That ambiguity is likely to draw pointed questions on the earnings call.
The Apple Card exit reshapes the business
Goldman’s decision to hand the Apple Card program to JPMorgan Chase, first reported by the Associated Press, represents the most visible piece of a broader retreat from consumer banking. The credit card venture with Apple generated enormous public attention at launch but also produced losses and regulatory friction that weighed on Goldman’s results for years. The AP confirmed the agreement to transfer the program, though the precise completion timeline and whether the migration of accounts was fully finished by early 2026 has not been detailed in public filings.
With the card business transitioning out, Goldman is now more narrowly concentrated on its traditional pillars: investment banking advisory, institutional trading, and asset and wealth management. That simplification reduces the firm’s direct exposure to consumer protection regulation and removes a persistent drag on profitability. It also raises a strategic question the April 13 report may begin to answer: whether transition and wind-down costs from the consumer exit are still flowing through the income statement, or whether the financial separation is largely complete.
Goldman’s annual 10-K filing for the year ended December 31, 2025, provides the most detailed public accounting of the firm’s financial condition, risk factors, and open legal matters heading into the new fiscal year. It is the essential baseline document for evaluating what Goldman itself has disclosed.
What to watch on April 13
The earnings report will be measured against several specific questions that analysts and investors have been circling for weeks.
The first and most immediate concern is whether trading revenue held up. Goldman’s fourth-quarter 2025 performance benefited from favorable equity markets and active client flows. Early 2026, by contrast, brought heightened policy uncertainty and sharp market swings. Both the firm’s fixed income, currencies, and commodities business and its equities trading desk face tough comparisons against the strong prior quarter, and any softness there will ripple through the headline numbers.
Closely related is the health of the investment banking pipeline. A rebound in mergers-and-acquisitions advisory and equity underwriting fueled Goldman’s late-2025 results, but the sustainability of that pipeline depends on CEO confidence across corporate America, credit availability, and regulatory approval timelines for large deals. “The forward calendar is what matters now,” one senior banking analyst noted in an April research briefing, capturing the sentiment that backward-looking revenue figures will matter less than management’s tone about what lies ahead.
Then there is the question of residual consumer banking costs. The Apple Card transition to JPMorgan Chase may have generated material one-time charges in the first quarter of 2026, and investors will want to know whether any reserves or obligations tied to the CFPB enforcement remain on the balance sheet or whether that page has been turned financially as well as legally.
Compliance spending is another area to watch. With the Fed’s cease-and-desist order terminated and the SEC blue sheet case resolved, Goldman may be positioned to reduce elevated remediation outlays. But large banks often operate under layers of supervisory expectations that never surface in public enforcement documents, and management’s tone on regulatory costs will matter as much as the numbers themselves.
Finally, capital return plans will signal how confident Goldman’s leadership feels about the road ahead. The firm’s capital position at year-end 2025, detailed in the 10-K, sets the stage for potential share buybacks and dividend decisions through mid-2026. How aggressively Goldman returns capital will tell investors whether management views the regulatory cleanup as truly complete and the earnings trajectory as reliable.
The bigger picture
Goldman Sachs enters this earnings season as a leaner, more focused firm than it was two years ago. The consumer banking experiment is winding down. Multiple enforcement actions have been formally closed. The core trading and advisory franchises delivered strong results when market conditions cooperated in late 2025.
But the scrutiny on April 13 will center on a harder question: whether that momentum reflects a genuine strategic reset or whether it was a product of unusually favorable conditions that have since shifted. The unresolved questions around the CFPB’s Apple Card enforcement, the financial costs of the consumer exit, and the durability of trading profits in a more uncertain macro environment all remain open. The first-quarter report will not close every gap. It will, however, offer the clearest look yet at whether Goldman’s post-cleanup identity can hold up when the tailwinds fade.
