Wall Street financial giant Goldman Sachs Group (GS.US) announced its third-quarter earnings report before the US stock market opened on Tuesday. The performance data showed that, driven by the US stock market bull market, the group's profits soared by 45% in the third quarter, mainly due to the unexpected significant increase in revenue from Goldman Sachs' stock trading business, which is known as the "bull market flag bearer," and the accelerated recovery of investment banking business. Goldman Sachs' net profit for Q3 jumped to $2.99 billion, a significant increase of 45% year-on-year, while diluted earnings per share were $8.40, a 54% increase year-on-year. Goldman Sachs' total revenue for Q3 increased by 7% year-on-year to $12.7 billion, higher than the market's general expectation of $11.8 billion. Driven by the strong earnings report, Goldman Sachs' stock price rose by more than 3.5% before the US stock market opened on Tuesday.

The company's stock traders have achieved the strongest quarterly performance in over three years, and Goldman Sachs' stock trading business is very likely to achieve the best annual performance in history. At the same time, Goldman Sachs' elite-level deal makers have received unexpected commission fees from every key business line. The profits of Goldman Sachs' investment banking business have been somewhat mitigated due to the previous decline in fixed income trading.

This year, investors have been significantly pushing up Goldman Sachs' stock price, mainly because the financial giant has abandoned the main setbacks in its consumer banking business and is preparing to benefit from the recovery trend of Wall Street investment banking business and the hot long-term bull market of US stocks. On Wall Street, financial giants such as Goldman Sachs have stated that they can withstand the impact of consumer retail business due to interest rate cuts, while emphasizing the potential for increased IPO business and M&A deal-making, which is expected to raise the entire industry's fee benchmark.

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Goldman Sachs' stock price has risen the most among the top US investment banks this year, with an increase of up to 36%, and reached a historical high on Monday. Since the beginning of this year, especially in the second half of the year, the stock price has soared mainly due to the rising expectation of a "soft landing" of the US economy, driving the continuous long bull market of US stocks, and thus promoting the continuous upward movement of the stock prices of Wall Street giants such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup, which hold a significant share in the US stock investment field.

The financial giant's performance includes a $415 million loss from the termination of the credit card cooperation with General Motors Co. and the abandonment of other small retail business-related credit businesses. Barclays Bank stated on Monday that after Goldman Sachs' failure to enter the consumer loan market, Barclays Bank will take over the relevant credit card business of General Motors.

This Wall Street financial giant also spent a lot of time last year trying to abandon the much larger credit card cooperation with Apple Inc. If Goldman Sachs exits the cooperation by selling the loan asset portfolio at a discount, this business with an outstanding balance of about $17 billion may suffer a more severe blow.

Chief Executive Officer David Solomon said last month that the revenue scale related to equity and debt investments in its capital management department has slowed down significantly, especially as the group reduces the scale of balance sheet investments. The revenue scale of this type is about $294 million, which has slowed down significantly compared to the recent quarters - including as high as $1.2 billion at the end of last year.

Despite the adjustment of business focus as the US stock market bull market becomes more and more hot, the bank has not yet achieved its target return on equity (ROE) of about 15%. In the past 10 quarters, the group has only achieved this target once. In the three months ending in September, the New York-based financial giant announced a return on equity of about 10.4% - this indicator tracks the specific profitability of the bank's shareholders' equity investment.

Detailed performance data shows that the overall business revenue of Goldman Sachs Group's entire stock trading department in the third quarter reached $3.5 billion, the best performance since the first quarter of 2021, a year-on-year increase of 18%, and a sequential increase of 10% - the second quarter had already achieved strong growth. Goldman Sachs Group attributed the significant increase in revenue from intermediation of stock-related derivatives and cash-type products in its financial report.

Goldman Sachs' fixed income trading business revenue in Q3 decreased by 12% year-on-year to $2.96 billion, mainly due to the significant cooling of interest rate-related transactions in the interest rate reduction cycle and a significant decline in commodity business revenue. In August, the group stated that Qin Xiao, co-head of the commodity business, resigned after only a few months in office, and the business growth had already slowed down significantly at that time.In the third quarter, Goldman Sachs' investment banking business revenue was approximately $1.87 billion, exceeding the average analyst expectation of $1.68 billion. During the same period, mergers and acquisitions advisory fees were about $875 million. After lagging behind competitors in the second quarter, Goldman Sachs has now surpassed its main rival, JPMorgan Chase, in this metric.

Goldman Sachs' equity underwriting business revenue in the third quarter was about $385 million, a significant year-over-year increase of 25%, reflecting the continued strong recovery of Wall Street investment banking business; the debt underwriting business revenue for the third quarter was about $605 million.

In the third quarter, Goldman Sachs' asset and wealth management-related business overall revenue was about $3.75 billion, a year-over-year increase of 12%. The group's management fees increased by about 9% in the third quarter. The group reported raising $16 billion in alternative businesses, most of which are related to credit-related strategies.

The consumer platform business, internally referred to as the "bad bank" at Goldman Sachs, saw a revenue decline of about 32%, to $391 million, due to related losses from the exit of business tied to General Motors, resulting in a pre-tax loss of about $559 million for Q3.