JPMorgan’s Rohrbaugh Says Clients Under ‘Extreme Stress’

(Bloomberg) — JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s trading head said that a lot of clients are under “extreme stress” tied to the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and resulting sanctions from the U.S. and European Union.

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At JPMorgan, markets revenue was down 10% this quarter from a year earlier as of Friday, but “things have changed a lot since then,” Troy Rohrbaugh, the firm’s global head of markets, said Tuesday at the RBC Global Financial Institutions Conference. The New York-based bank won’t give further trading guidance for the quarter, he said.

“The markets are extremely treacherous at the moment — there’s a lot of uncertainty,” Rohrbaugh said. “The full ramifications of the current conditions are still uncertain.”

Rohrbaugh highlighted turbulence in emerging markets related to Russia, as well as stress around sanctions, which hits multiple markets and commodities in particular.

U.S. stocks rebounded midday Tuesday as investors weighed the impact of President Joe Biden’s announcement that the U.S. will ban imports of Russian fossil fuels including oil. Treasury yields rose and crude oil climbed. The U.S. move will be matched in part by the U.K., which announced a ban on Russian oil imports on Tuesday, though it will continue to allow natural gas and coal from the country. The decision could exacerbate crude supply crunches that have sent oil surging past $125 a barrel in New York.

In the fourth quarter, JPMorgan’s fixed-income trading revenue slid 16%, worse than the 13.5% decline analysts had been expecting, while total trading revenue fell 11%, versus a 9% estimate. While the fixed-income business was the biggest loser, equities revenue also declined, falling 2% to $1.95 billion, the bank said when it reported quarterly results in January.

In the wide-ranging discussion Tuesday, Rohrbaugh also said that JPMorgan plans to let customers guide the firm on crypto assets.

“As our clients become more significant investors in these products, particularly our asset-manager clients, we plan to move with them,” Rohrbaugh said, adding that “getting some regulatory clarity would be helpful.”

(Updates with bans on Russian oil imports in fifth paragraph.)